W. Eugene Smith Quotes

Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness.

What use having a great depth of field, if there is not an adequate depth of feeling?

The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera.

Never have I found the limits of the photographic potential. Every horizon, upon being reached, reveals another beckoning in the distance. Always, I am on the threshold.

I try to take what voice I have and I give it to those who don’t have one at all.

Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors.

I didn’t write the rules. Why would I follow them?

Hardening of the categories causes art disease.

The journalistic photographer can have no other than a personal approach; and it is impossible for him to be completely objective. Honest—yes. Objective—no.

If I can get them to think, get them to feel, get them to see, then I've done about all that I can as a teacher.

You can't photograph if you're not in love.

I've never made any picture, good or bad, without paying for it in emotional turmoil.

I think photojournalism is documentary photography with a purpose.

My photographs at best hold only a small length, but through them I would suggest and criticize and illuminate and try to give compassionate understanding.

In music I still prefer the minor key, and in printing I like the light coming from the dark. I like pictures that surmount the darkness, and many of my photographs are that way. It is the way I see photographically. For practical reasons, I think it looks better in print too.

...and each time I pressed the shutter release it was a shouted condemnation hurled with the hope that the picture might survive through the years, with the hope that they might echo through the minds of men in the future - causing them caution and remembrance and realization.

Available light is any damn light that is available!

My camera, my intentions stopped no man from falling. Nor did they aid him after he had fallen. It could be said that photographs be damned for they bind no wounds. Yet, I reasoned, if my photographs could cause compassionate horror within the viewer, they might also prod the conscience of that viewer into taking action.

With considerable soul searching, that to the utmost of my ability, I have let truth be the prejudice.

I can’t stand these damn shows on museum walls with neat little frames, where you look at the images as if they were pieces of art. I want them to be pieces of life!

What's the best type of light? Why that would be available light... and by available light I mean any damn light is available.

Negatives are the notebooks, the jottings, the false starts, the whims, the poor drafts, and the good draft but never the completed version of the work The print and a proper one is the only completed photograph, whether it is specifically shaded for reproduction, or for a museum wall.

I am constantly torn between the attitude of the conscientious journalist who is a recorder and interpreter of the facts and of the creative artist who often is necessarily at poetic odds with the literal facts.

The first word I would remove from the folklore of journalism is the word objective.

... to became neighbours and friends instead of journalists. This is the way to make your finest photographs.