Photography Quotes - Page 19

I suffered first as a child from discrimination, poverty ... So I think it was a natural follow from that that I should use my camera to speak for people who are unable to speak for themselves.

At the heart of all photography is an urge to express our deepest personal feelings - to reveal our inner, hidden selves, to unlock the artist. Those of us who become photographers are never satisfied with just looking at someone else's expression of something that is dear to us. We must produce our own images, instead of buying postcards and photo books. We seek to make our own statements of individuality.

A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?

One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind.

A photographer must be prepared to catch and hold on to those elements which give distinction to the subject or lend it atmosphere.

You don't take a photograph, you make it.

Surprise quality can be achieved in many ways. It may be produced by a certain stimulating geometrical relationship between elements in the picture or through the human interest of the situation photographed or by calling our attention to some commonplace but fascinating thing we have never noticed before or it can be achieved by looking at an everyday thing in a new interesting way.

Photography just gets us out of the house.

The secret of photography is, the camera takes on the character and personality of the handler.

What is truth in photography? It can be told in a hundred different ways. Every thirtieth of a second when the shutter snaps, its capturing a different piece of information.

When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.

The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion.

Photography is painting with light! The blurs, the spots, those are errors! But the errors are part of it, they give it poetry and turn it into painting. And for that you need as bad a camera as possible! If you want to be famous, you have to do whatever you're doing worse than anyone else in the whole world.

I just think it's important to be direct and honest with people about why you're photographing them and what you're doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul.

Photograph the world as it is. Nothing's more interesting than reality.

Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience.

...candid still photography had taken over... What was interesting was that the photographs came without any intention of instructing you... You're like a cat looking out the window. You don't have to even know what you're watching, but you're watching it, and you're watching it very accurately.

Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.

In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.

I think that emotional content is an image's most important element, regardless of the photographic technique. Much of the work I see these days lacks the emotional impact to draw a reaction from viewers, or remain in their hearts.

It was the era of photography. This may have influenced us, and played a part in our reaction against anything resembling a snapshot of life. (On the year 1905)

Photography is no longer a love affair with the beauty of reality.

Max Kozloff said to me one day, ‘You’re not really a photographer. You do photography, but you do it for your own purposes – your purposes are not the same as others’. I’m not quite sure what he meant, but I like that. I like the way he put it.

The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.

What makes [photography] obscene is its terrible cruelty. Happiness may be fleeting, but it's the reason we go on living. Photography is the joy that precedes pain, the moment of life just before death.