Henri Cartier-Bresson (August 22, 1908 – August 3, 2004) was a French photographer considered the master of candid photography, and an early user of 35 mm film. He helped develop street photography, and approvingly cited a notion of the inevitability of a decisive moment, a term adopted as the title for his first major book. His work has influenced many photographers.
On The Decisive Moment’…”Photography is not like painting,” Cartier-Bresson told the Washington Post in 1957. “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,” he said.
“Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.”
