Balinese dancer

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.

Things-as-they-are offer such an abundance of material that a photographer must guard against the temptation of trying to do everything.  It is essential to cut from the raw material of life – to cut and cut, but to cut with discrimination.  While working, a photographer must reach a precise awareness of what he is trying to do.  Sometimes you have the feeling that you have already taken the strongest possible picture of a particular situation or scene; nevertheless, you find yourself compulsively shooting, because you cannot be sure in advance exactly how the situation, the scene is going to unfold.  You must stay with the scene, just in case elements of the situation shoot off from the core again.  At the same time, it’s essential to avoid shooting like a machine-gunner and burdening yourself with useless recordings which clutter your memory and spoil the exactness of the reportage as a whole.

Henri Cartier-Bresson in Images a la sauvette

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