Goodbye Henri

Henri Cartier Bresson, Goodbye at 95. Thankyou for your inspiration.

"I'm not interested in my photographs, nor other people's,"

"There is something appalling about photographing people. It is certainly some sort of violation; so if sensitivity is lacking, there can be something barbaric about it."

"I'm not an actor," he insisted. "What does it mean, 'celebrity'? I call myself an artisan. Anyone with sensitivity is potentially an artist. But then you must have concentration besides sensitivity."

"My contact sheets may be compared to the way you drive a nail in a plank," he said. "First you give several light taps to build up a rhythm and align the nail with the wood. Then, much more quickly, and with as few strokes as possible, you hit the nail forcefully on the head and drive it in."

"A velvet hand, a hawk's eye - these we should all have."

"I adore shooting photographs. It's like being a hunter. But some hunters are vegetarians - which is my relationship to photography."

"I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to 'trap' life - to preserve life in the act of living," ... "Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was unrolling before my eyes."

"God is a world of guilt. With original sin we are guilty for being alive, it's monstrous. In any case I have never believed,"

Henri Cartier-Bresson

In the NY Times:

"A few years ago, Mr. Cartier-Bresson went to the Pompidou Center in Paris to sketch a Matisse portrait. Balanced on his favorite shooting stick, nose buried in his drawing, he paid no attention to the tourists who snapped his picture and videotaped him; they seemed unaware of who he was but charmed simply by the sight of an old man sketching."

"When he got up to leave, he noticed a couple sitting side by side on a bench, a child resting on the man's shoulder. "A perfect composition if you cut out the woman," Mr. Cartier-Bresson said, and made a brisk, chopping gesture toward her. The woman looked baffled. "Why didn't I bring my camera?" he asked. Then he clicked an imaginary shutter and left."