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The Photograph & You /

23 - How Often Do Good

Photographs Occur?

Henri Cartier-Bresson said:

It's seldom you make a great picture. You have to milk the cow quite a lot and get plenty of milk to make a little cheese.1

The photographer Norma Holt photographed painter Raphael Soyer, not long before he died.

Soyer, standing in his studio, said:

I go to my studio everyday and put my canvas on the easel, and I say to myself, maybe today I'll really paint a good painting--finally do a good one.[2]

1 Henri Cartier-Bresson, The Decisive Moment, Scholastic Achievement Series (slide show of his work, with comments by the photographer), 1972.

2 Smith, R. (1999, February). Photography through the ages: Norma Holt. ShutterBug Magazine, http://www.shutterbug.net/features/0299sb_norma/.