During the work, you have to be sure that you haven't left any holes, that you've captured everything, because afterwards it will be too late.

The creative act lasts but a brief moment, a lightning instant of give-and-take, just long enough for you to level the camera and to trap the fleeting prey in your little box.

In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little, human detail can become a Leitmotiv.

Actually, I'm not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I'm not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren't cooks.

Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.

To photograph is to hold one's breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It's at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.

The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.

We photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory.

He made me suddenly realize that photographs could reach eternity through the moment.