Beyond the lens

Here are a couple of quotations from Henri Cartier-Bresson regarding portraiture as near as I can remember.• • • • •
"The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt."
• • • • •
"I once was commissioned to photograph an old lady--a wonderful old lady--and she asked to check on the picture before publication. I told here I've never done that, it's a question of trust. And she said, 'Oh, it's my wrinkles.'
"But that's the interesting part, the wrinkles. It's a mark of living. "It's life--the way you live life; the intellectual baggage you take with you."It's all these things. "After a certain age you got the face you deserve, I think."