Photography Quotes - Page 42

Photography is a mechanical device; photomontage is a piece of work done with the products of photography. This entire process forms one whole... If I assemble documents and juxtapose them with intelligence and skill, the effect of agitation and propaganda on the masses will be enormous.

I want to enjoy the languor of just living, recognizing, acknowledging, taking it in, sort of amplifying it in some way. [Photography] is a great medium for that. It happens in an instant, but it gives you hours or days of time to reflect on things. It’s a beautiful system, this game of photography, to see in an instant and go back and think about later on. It’s pure philosophy. And poetry.

Photography is about being exquisitely present.

A career in photography is a journey without a destination.

Had I not been told to look, I would have quite, ignorant of what was really there, because I had 'made plans' and was wearing visual and emotional blinders that limited my perceptions and my vision.

I'm a New Yorker. I don't believe in air unless I can see it.

If you're not your own severest critic, you are your own worst enemy.

I feed on art more than I ever do on photographs. I can admire photography, but I wouldn't go to it out of hunger.

It must be confessed that it takes considerable skill to produce the best kind of lies. It is in the hands of first-class photographers only - and perhaps the indifferent ones - that photography can lie.

During the work, you have to be sure that you haven't left any holes, that you've captured everything, because afterwards it will be too late.

The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt.

To photograph: it is to put on the same line of sight the head, the eye and the heart.

Thinking should be done before and after, not during photographing.

Photography is an adventure just as life is an adventure. If man wishes to express himself photographically, he must understand, surely to a certain extent, his relationship to life.

Originally, one of the reasons I was drawn to photography, as opposed to painting or sculpture or installation, is that of all the arts it is the most democratic, in so far as it's instantly readable and accessible to our culture. Photography is how we move information back and forth.

A photograph can look any way.

Photography concentrates one's eye on the superficial. For that reason it obscures the hidden life which glimmers through the outlines of things like a play of light and shade. One can't catch that even with the sharpest lens.

All I wanted was to connect my moods with those of Paris. Beauty pains and when it pained most, I shot.

With photography a new language has been created. Now for the first time it is possible to express reality by reality. We can look at an impression as long as we wish, we can delve into it and, so to speak, renew past experiences at will.

I'm an amateur photographer, apart from being a professional one, and I think maybe my amateur pictures are the better ones.

You can find pictures anywhere. It's simply a matter of noticing things and organizing them.

I see no difference between my pictures that people consider amusing and the rest. To me, it's all serious work - they're just a reaction to what I see. I don't leave this apartment in the morning and say to myself 'Today I'm going to be funny and tomorrow I'm going to be sad.'

...the pepper is beginning to show signs of strain, and tonight should grace a salad. It has been suggested that I am a cannibal to eat my models.

To me, photography is like a quest, or a pilgrimage, or a hunt. I love painting, I love music, but photography is what has allowed me to get outside of myself.

Photographers tend not to photograph what they can’t see, which is the very reason one should try to attempt it. Otherwise we’re going to go on forever just photographing more faces and more rooms and more places. Photography has to transcend description. It has to go beyond description to bring insight into the subject, or reveal the subject, not as it looks, but how does it feel?