Photograph Quotes - Page 13

A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever.

Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation. A photograph is a result of the photographer's decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.

I’m interested in using the iconography of nature and the American landscape as surrogates or metaphors for psychological anxiety, fear or desire

The greatest photographs are motivated by human feeling.

Photography is a love affair with life.

The Earth is Art, The Photographer is only a Witness.

Portraits are the most intimate photographs. The image will survive the subject.

Only photograph what you love.

A photograph must come from imagination and not be a reflection of what is.

My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.

Even though fixed in time, a photograph evokes as much feeling as that which comes from music or dance. Whatever the mode - from the snapshot to the decisive moment to multi-media montage - the intent and purpose of photography is to render in visual terms feelings and experiences that often elude the ability of words to describe. In any case, the eyes have it, and the imagination will always soar farther than was expected.

That [photographs] disturb readers is exactly as it should be: that's why photojournalism is often more powerful than written journalism.

I like taking photographs, because I like life. And I like photographing people best of all, because most of all I love humanity.

To photograph is to hold one's breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It's at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.

I'm not responsible for my photographs. Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. It's drowning yourself, dissolving yourself, and then sniff, sniff, sniff - being sensitive to coincidence. You can't go looking for it; you can't want it, or you won't get it. First you must lose your self. Then it happens.

I'd very much like to create my own style as a photographer, even if it's just for myself.

Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see how somebody figured another way to rub colored dirt on a flat surface and make space where there is no space or make you think of a life experience.

Looking and seeing are two different things. What matters is the relationship with the subject.

The beauty of women was the first expression of my photography.

Videos are more like photography. It's not as much about trying to tell a story as it is creating images.

What's the point of getting killed if you've got the wrong exposure?

A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.

I think photography was inside me. Once I found it, it became stronger than me and I took refuge in it.

Photography, fortunately, to me has not only been a profession but also a contact between people - to understand human nature and record, if possible, the best in each individual.

I gravitate towards places where humans have been and are no more, to the edge of man's influence, where the elements are taking over or covering man's traces.