“Naturally I take full advantage of the possibilities of different lenses, but I don’t carry a suitcase full of them: an Elmar 50mm, a wide-angle 35mm, and an 85mm − these are my tools, with, of course, the latest, the f/1.5, for night photography. I take advantage of these various depths, I open or close the shutter, or I leave a full aperture: it depends on my needs.”

_{‘A Reporter, Interview with Daniel Masclet (1951)’ in Henri Cartier-Bresson, Interviews and Conversations 1951-1998, p.13 (2017)}

“The 50mm. Not the 35mm: it’s too big, too wide! With that, photographers all think they are Tintoretto. Even if everything is sharp, it is still a distortion. With the 50mm, you keep a certain distance. I know, they are going to say again that I am ‘classic’. I don’t care: to me, the 50mm remains the closest thing there is to the human gaze. You can shoot everything with it − streets, landscapes, or portraits. When you have the eye of a painter and a visual grammar, you work with a 50mm without even thinking that with a 35mm you’d get more depth of field. Painting, drawing, photography, documentary film: to me, it’s all one.”

_{‘We Always Talk Too Much, Conversation with Pierre Assouline (1994)’ in Henri Cartier-Bresson, Interviews and Conversations 1951-1998, p.134 (2017)}