Magnum Photos has been releasing some images online from their singular historic archives which is an incredible opportunity to study and learn from the masters in their catalog. These images by Henri Cartier-Bresson, some of which have not been widely published, provide a rich insight into his style and process.

BERLIN—Taxi drivers, 1931, Henri Cartier-Bresson © Magnum Photos

I am in awe of him, I am in absolute awe of him. Everyone is a Cartier-Bresson baby…I worship him.

-Richard Avedon.

PARIS—Bofinger restaurant, 1969. © Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos

Nothing worth knowing can be taught.

-Henri Cartier-Bresson

ACAPULCO, Mexico—A market, 1963. © Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos

You mustn’t want, you must be receptive. Don’t think even. The brain’s a bit dangerous.

-Henri Cartier-Bresson

PARIS—Café Flore, 1959. © Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos

I don’t consider myself a photographer, I am using a camera, but there are millions of photographers….I’m just a human being. Anyone that is sensitive is an artist.

-Henri Cartier-Bresson

NEW YORK CITY—A football game at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, 1947. © Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos

Photography is nothing–it’s life that interests me.

- Henri Cartier-Bresson

NEW YORK CITY—Downtown, 1947. © Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos

They . . . asked me:

‘How do you make your pictures?’ I was puzzled . . .

I said, ‘I don’t know, it’s not important.’

-Henri Cartier-Bresson

VILLAGE OF BRANGUES, France—French writer and diplomat Paul Claudel, 1945. © Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos

In a portrait, I’m looking for the silence in somebody.

-Henri Cartier-Bresson

AHMEDABAD, GUJARAT, India—The Rangwala retail and wholesale cloth market, 1966. © Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos

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.

-Henri Cartier-Bresson

NAPLES, Italy—1960. © Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos

And no photographs taken with the aid of flash light, either, if only out of respect for the actual light – even when there isn’t any of it.

-Henri Cartier-Bresson – “The Decisive Moment”

ELEUSIS, Greece—1953. © Henri Cartier-Bresson / Magnum Photos

There is no closed figure in nature. Every shape participates with another. No one thing is independent of another, and one thing rhymes with another, and light gives them shape.

-Henri Cartier-Bresson