Of all the means of expression, photography is the only one that fixes forever the precise and transitory instant. We photographers deal in things that are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished, there is no contrivance on earth that can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory. The writer has time to reflect. He can accept and reject, accept again; and before committing his thoughts to paper he is able to tie the several relevant elements together. There is also a period when his brain "forgets," and his subconscious works on classifying his thoughts. But for photographers, what has gone is gone forever.
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About Henri Cartier-Bresson
Henri Cartier-Bresson was a 20th-century French photographer. Henri Cartier-Bresson was a French humanist photographer, and also an artist. He was considered a master of candid photography, and was an early user of 35mm film. Read more on Wikipedia →