For the silence of those who are absent.

Christian Dior
Paris, 1945

Jeanne Lanvin
Paris, 1945

Alberto Giacometti
Stampa, Switzerland, 1961

Arthur Honegger
France, c.1945

Koen Yamaguchi
Kyoto, 1965

Irène and Frédéric Joliot-Curie
At home, Paris, c.1944

Colette and her housekeeper
At home, Paris, 1952

Igor Markevitch
Paris, 1964

William Faulkner
At home, Oxford, Mississippi, 1947

Carson McCullers

New York, 1946

Arthur Miller

USA, 1961

Robert Oppenheimer

USA, 1958

Albert Camus

Paris, 1945

Simone de Beauvoir

Rue Schoelcher, Paris, 1947

Joan Miró

In his studio, Barcelona, 1953

Paul Léautaud

In his garden, France, 1952

Alfred Stieglitz

At home, New York, 1946

Susan Sontag

Paris, 1972

Mélanie Cartier-Bresson

Paris, 1999

Samuel Beckett

At home, Paris, 1964

All photographs by Henri Cartier-Bresson

[Scanned from An Inner Silence: The Portraits of Henri Cartier-Bresson]

"To me, photography is a simultaneous recognition in a fraction of a second of a significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of form which gives that event its proper expression. I believe that, for reactive living, the discovery of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us, which can mold us, but which can also be affected by us. A balance must be established between these two worlds: the one inside us, and the one outside us. As the result of a constant reciprocal process, both these worlds come to form a single one. And it is this world that we must communicate.

But this takes care only of a content of a picture. For me, content cannot be separated from form. By form, I mean a rigorous geometrical organization of interplay of surfaces, lines and values. It is in this organization alone, that our conceptions and emotions become concrete and communicable. In photography, visual organization can stem only from a developed instinct.

First I would like to say that it is only a rule I established in myself, a certain discipline, but it is not a school, it’s not a.. it’s very personal. And I think that we cannot separate what we have to say from the way we have to say it, how to speak. Photography is in a way a mental process. We have to know what to, be clear, on what we want to say. Our conceptions, our, what we think of a certain situation, a certain problem.

Photography is a way of writing it, of drawing, making sketches of it. And in the form, things are offered to us in daily life. We have to be alert and know when to pick the moment which is significant. Then, it’s just intuition. It’s instinct. We don’t know why, we press at a certain moment. It comes, it is there, it’s given. Take it. Everything is there, it is a question of chance, but you have to pick and force chance to come to you. There’s a certain will."

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Famous Photographers Tell How, 1958

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"Freedom for me is a strict frame, and inside that frame are all the variations possible."

Henri Cartier-Bresson, Interview with Sheila Turner-Seed, 1971

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Kandjoura - Toumani Diabaté

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