“A contact sheet is so interesting, because you see how a photographer thinks. He comes closer and closer to a subject, corrects it, looks at it again, and then with tiny movements turns around until it is in exactly the right and exact relation to him. Contact sheets may be compared to the way you drive a nail into a plank. First you give several light taps to build up a rhythm and align the nail with the wood. Then, much more quickly, and with as few strokes as possible, you hit the nail forcefully on the head and drive it in.”

— Henri Cartier-Bresson

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Conversation. Interview with Byron Dobell (1957), p. 37

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Henri Cartier-Bresson33

French photographer 1908–2004

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