Photography Quotes

It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart and head.

A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person.

I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical.

Only photography has been able to divide human life into a series of moments, each of them has the value of a complete existence.

You only get one sunrise and one sunset a day, and you only get so many days on the planet. A good photographer does the math and doesn't waste either.

You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.

I'm not an abstractionist. I'm not interested in the relationship of color or form or anything else. I'm interested only in expressing basic human emotions: tragedy, ecstasy, doom, and so on.

I like to make people a little uncomfortable. It encourages them to examine who they are and why they think the way they do.

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.

A lot of people seem to think that art or photography is about the way things look, or the surface of things. That's not what it's about for me. It's really about relationships and feelings...it's really hard for me to do commercial work because people kind of want me to do a Nan Goldin. They don't understand that it's not about a style or a look or a setup. It's about emotional obsession and empathy.

Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life.

The biggest cliche in Photography is Sunrise and Sunset.

[Photography] ties back into this feeling of wanting to watch things fall and the moment before they break. Fireworks are that way for me - this lovely thing that blows up and is gone. It all goes back to this desire to record things before they disappear - the original reason we take pictures, right?

Wherever there is light, one can photograph.

The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.

Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.

Most of my photos are grounded in people, I look for the unguarded moment, the essential soul peeking out, experience etched on a persons face.

Nothing is ever the same twice because everything is always gone forever, and yet each moment has infinite photographic possibilities.

The body says what words cannot.

You can observe a lot by just watching.

Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask 'how', while others of a more curious nature will ask 'why'. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.

You can look at a picture for a week and never think of it again. You can also look at the picture for a second and think of it all your life.

If you want to be a photographer, first leave home

If photographers are responsible for creating or reflecting an image of women in society, then I must say, there is only one way for the future, and this is to define women as strong and independent. This should be the responsibility of photographers today: to free women, and finally everyone, from the terror of youth and perfection.

I don't have a burning desire to go out and document anything. It just happens when it happens. It's not a conscious effort, nor is it a struggle. Wouldn't do it if it was. The idea of the suffering artist has never appealed to me. Being here is suffering enough.