Quotes by
Robert Doisneau

A hundredth of a second here, a hundredth of a second there -- even if you put them end to end, they still only add up to one, two, perhaps three seconds, snatched from eternity.

I'm not a collector at heart. I'm never tormented by the longing to possess things. I'm quite happy with my pictures. I've been cohabiting with them for years now and we know each other inside out, so I feel I'm entitled to say that pictures have a life and a character of their own. Maybe they're like plants they won't really flourish unless you talk to them. I haven't gone that far - not yet anyway. Lots of them behave like good little girls and give me a nice smile whenever I walk past, but others are real bitches and never miss any opportunity to ruin my life. I handle them with kid gloves.

The photographer must be absorbent--like a blotter, allow himself to be permeated by the poetic moment.... His technique should be like an animal function...he should act automatically.

I hate collectors, the ones who take something just for themselves.

You've got to struggle against the pollution of intelligence in order to become an animal with very sharp instincts - a sort of intuitive medium - so that to photograph becomes a magical act, and slowly other more suggestive images begin to appear behind the visible image, for which the photographer cannot be held responsible.

I don't usually give out advice or recipes, but you must let the person looking at the photograph go some of the way to finishing it. You should offer them a seed that will grow and open up their minds.

A photographer who made a picture from a splendid moment, an accidental pose of someone or a beautiful scenery, is the finder of a treaser.

To suggest is to create; to describe is to destroy.

You must not trample on other people’s secret gardens. You must remember: to suggest is to create; to describe is to destroy.

You know, they always say that the photographer is “a hunter of images.” That is a flattering image, the idea of a hunter, it’s virile, acquired power. Actually though, it isn’t that. We are really fishermen with hooks and lines.

For a photographer, the first 70 years are a bit difficult, but after that things get better.

There is that moment when we are truly visionary. There, everything works tremendously well. But all this is only a part of that great game that puts us into a trance, into a state of receptivity. This trance doesn’t last long, however, because life always calls you back to its commands. There are always contingencies. But somehow, despite it all, the effect does last. I think that it could be classed as a feeling. For me it is a kind of "religion of looking."

I prefer my hesitations, my false paths, my stammering, to a preconceived idea.

The world I was trying to present was one where I would feel good, where people would be friendly, where I could find the tenderness I longed for. My photos were like a proof that such a world could exist.

Nowadays people’s visual imagination is so much more sophisticated, so much more developed, particularly in young people, that now you can make an image which just slightly suggests something, they can make of it what they will.

When I first started to take photos I’d …pull the black cloth over my head and feel totally secure in the knowledge that no one could see me.

If you take photographs, don’t speak, don’t write, don’t analyse yourself, and don’t answer any questions.

If I knew how to take a good photograph, I'd do it every time.

I like people for their weaknesses and faults. I get on well with ordinary people. We talk. We start with the weather, and little by little we get to the important things. When I photograph them it is not as if I were examining them with a magnifying class, like a cold and scientific observer. It's very brotherly. And it's better, isn't it, to shed some light on those people who are never in the limelight.

The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street.

The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street.

The best photos, the ones that are remembered, are the ones that have first passed through the person’s mind before being restored by the camera.

Why should I have to photograph in a foreign place when people there do it very well for themselves?

Photography is very subjective. Photography is not a document on which a report can be made. It is a subjective document. Photography is a false witness, a lie.

The advantage we have, compared to painters and writers, is that we never lose contact with the rough side of life. It is a lesson in humility and it keeps us from some pitfalls. But above all it nourishes us.

Life is short. Break the rules. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that made you smile!

I don’t usually give out advice or recipes, but you must let the person looking at the photograph go some of the way to finishing it. You should offer them a seed that will grow and open up their minds.

You have to let the person who will look at the picture—provided that he isn’t an ass—always walk along that visual path for himself. We must always remember that a picture is also made up of the person who looks at it.