Eve Arnold Quotes

If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.

If you are careful with people, they will offer you part of themselves. That is the big secret.

I didn't want to be a woman photographer. That would limit me. I wanted to be a photographer who was a woman, with all the world open to my camera.

I don't see anybody as either ordinary or extraordinary. I see them simply as people in front of my lens.

I have been poor and I wanted to document poverty; I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth; I was interested in politics and I wanted to know how it affected our lives; I am a woman and I wanted to know about women.

What do you hang on the walls of your mind?

The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.

I think if I ever get satisfied, I’ll have to stop. It’s the frustration that drives you.

It's the hardest thing in the world to take the mundane and try to show how special it is.

If the photographer is interested in the people in front of his lens, and if he is compassionate, it's already a lot. The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.

I never knew anyone who came close to Marilyn in natural ability to use both photographer and still camera. She was special in this, and for me there has been no one like her before or after. She has remained the measuring rod by which I have - unconsciously - judged other subjects.

It doesn’t matter if you use a box camera or a Leica, the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing. What I have tried to do is involve the people I was photographing. To have them realize without saying so, that it was up to them to give me whatever they wanted to give me . . . if they were willing to give, I was willing to photograph.

What drove me and kept me going over the decades? If I had to use a single word, it would be 'curiosity.

Being a woman is just a marvelous plus in photographing. Men like to be photographed by women, it becomes flirtatious and fun, and women feel less as if they're expected to be in a relationship.

I look for a sense of reality with everything I did. I didn't work in a studio, I didn't light anything. I found a way of working which pleased me because I didn't have to frighten people with heavy equipment. It was that little black box and me and £5 worth of film in my pocket or maybe it was only £2 in those days.

I love the idea I can go off with a single camera and a few rolls of film unencumbered... I was not interested in the illusion of reality, I wanted to get close to what was happening.

I found a way of working which pleased me because I didn’t have to frighten people with heavy equipment. It was that little black box and me.

Lesson number one: Pay attention to the intrusion of the camera.

What I have tried to do is involve the people I was photographing... if they were willing to give, I was willing to photograph.

Themes recur again and again in my work.

It doesn't matter if you use a box camera or you use a Leica; the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing.

You can't make a great musician or a great photographer if the magic isn't there.

A studio session ... provides the greatest chance for control. Even though there is total freedom, I still dislike studio photography and the contrived images that usually stem from this genre.

I realise that I had the best of serious picture journalism. There was an innocence in our approach, especially in the 1950s and 1960s when we naively believed that by holding a mirror up to the world we could help - no matter how little - to make people aware of the human condition.

I came to photography by accident.