He seems bashful, almost shy, about his extraordinary talent; looking back on his achievements, he refers to photography as a thing of the past. "My passion has never been for photography 'in itself,'" Cartier-Bresson wrote in 1994, "but for the possibility — through forgetting yourself — of recording in a fraction of a second the emotion of a subject, and the beauty of the form."

...

Henri Cartier-Bresson has long considered photography an intuitive venture, one that connects keen observation with feeling and an uncanny sense of how to construct a picture. "To take photographs," he once said, "... is putting one's head, one's eye and one's heart on the same axis." In other words, his working process combines sentiment and sensitivity for his subjects with an informed ability to look into the world around him. Still, to come to grips with his intentions, it is important to place his work in the context of his complicated and independent spirit, one that has thrived amid the turbulence of the 20th century. "He's a free man, which is very rare in this century, free of all opinions," says photographer Gilles Peress, a current member of Magnum.

                                                                                       By Philip Brookman

上面摘自Brookman为布列松写的一篇传记文章Conversations in Silence ,今天上网的时候偶然看到的，我觉得真的写得很好，只是由于文章太长，只能选几段出来。

是的，布列松就是一个极具个性却又相当低调的大师。他将自己看成是一个旁观者，通过摄影记录一些不为人注意，却是日常生活中的重要片段；他总是用尊重客观、注重事实的手法拍摄，从不摆布；他考虑照片的自然和典型性，而不是哗众取宠；他使用尽量少的器材，以至于经常携带的只有一台Leica的35mm旁轴和50mm f2 的镜头；他通常记录普通的瞬间，而不是历史事件。

不知为什么，每次看他的作品总能感到一种莫名的震撼。

愿大师在天堂里安息。