Henri Cartier-Bresson Eye Quotations

Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.

A photographer’s eye is perpetually evaluating. A photographer can bring coincidence of line simply by moving his head a fraction of a millimetre. He can modify perspectives by a slight bending of the knees. By placing the camera closer to or farther from the subject, he draws a detail. But he composes a picture in very nearly the same amount of time it takes to click the shutter, at the speed of a reflex action.

In whatever one does there must be a relationship between the eye and the heart.

I am a visual man. I watch, watch, watch. I understand things through my eyes.

To take photographs is putting one's head, one's eye, and one's heart on the same axis

With the one eye that is closed, one looks within, with the other eye that is open, one looks without.

To photograph: it is to put on the same line of sight the head, the eye and the heart.

There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.

Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.

One eye looks within, the other eye looks without.

Photography is, for me, a spontaneous impulse coming from an ever attentive eye which captures the moment and its eternity.

One eye of the photographer looks wide open through the viewfinder, the other, the closed looks into his own soul.

It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart and head.