The Big Book Of Photography Quotes

A compilation of Photography Quotes

This is a collection of quotes from various sources, including old interviews
found in dusty books. Compiled by Olivier Duong, Inspired Eye
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“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you

have caught on film is captured forever… It remembers little things,
long after you have forgotten everything.”
Aaron Siskind

“It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter.”
Alfred Stieglitz
“In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real
than reality.”
Alfred Stieglitz

“Have you ever been in love? Then you can be a photographer”

Alfred Stieglitz

“Art is the affirmation of life”

Alfred Stieglitz

“The moment always dictates my work”

Andre Kertesz

“What I feel, I do. This is the most important thing for me”
Andre Kertesz

“Everybody can look, but they don't necessarily see”

Andre Kertesz

“The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when
the people in it do.”
Andy Wharhol

“The best images are the ones that retain their strength and impact
over the years, regardless of the number of times they are viewed.”
Anne Geddes

“A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in
love with these people.”
Annie Leibovitz
 “One doesn’t stop seeing. One doesn’t stop framing. It doesn’t turn
off and turn on. It’s on all the time.”
Annie Leibovitz

“The camera makes you forget you’re there. It’s not like you are
hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.”
Annie Leibovitz

“When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is

that I’d like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph.”
Annie Leibovitz

“Taking an image, freezing a moment, reveals how rich reality truly

is.”
Anonymous

“You don’t take a photograph. You ask quietly to borrow it.”

Anonymous

“Life is like a camera. Just focus on what’s important and capture the
good times, develop from the negatives and if things don’t work out,
just take another shot.”
Anonymous

“A tear contains an ocean. A photographer is aware of the tiny

moments in a persons life that reveal greater truths.”
Anonymous

“Once you learn to care, you can record images with your mind or on
film. There is no difference between the two.”
Anonymous
 “When people ask me what equipment I use I tell them my eyes.”
Anonymous

“Life is like a camera. Just focus on what’s important and capture the
good times, develop from the negatives and if things don’t work out,
just take another shot.”
Anonymous

“When people ask me what equipment I use, I tell them my eyes.”

Anonymous

“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When

images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.”
Ansel Adams

“There's nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept”

Ansel Adams

“It is a strange thing that as techniques develop, the materials, the

lenses, the cameras get more accurate and perfect, the quality of
perception and execution goes down, because they count on the
machine to do it”
Ansel Adams

“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”

Ansel Adams

“The negative is the equivalent of the composer’s score and the print
the performance.”
Ansel Adams
 “Photography is an austere and blazing poetry of the real.”
Ansel Adams

“I have yet to see a fine photograph which is not a good document”

Berenice Abbott

“In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.”

August Sander

“Photography helps people to see.”

Berenice Abbott

“In photography you can never express yourself directly, only

through optics, the physical and chemical process”
Brassai

“Images convey personality just as strongly as a drawing”

Brassai
“It is up to the artist to create art, not the camera”
Brett Weston
“An artist has to have a strong ego. He has to be enamored of his
work. His art has to be the most important thing in his life”
Brett Weston

“My basic drive is to create, not to be famous”

Brett Weston

On his best year: “My present work. You move ahead. You don't rest
on your laurels”
Brett Weston
 “It (Photography) can record beauty precisely in a split second. A
painter can't do this, a writer can't do this, a sculptor can't do this”
Brett Weston

“I would rather hare an audience of say a thousand people who really

love my work than ten million”
Brett Weston

“In general mass audiences are tasteless”

Brett Weston

“I photograph people's thoughts”

Cecil B. Demille

“Photography is the story I fail to put into words.”

Destin Sparks

“Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and
stealing Oreo cookies.”
Diane Arbus

“I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t

photograph them.”
Diane Arbus

“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the

less you know.”
Diane Arbus

“Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what
you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel
 anything when they look at your pictures.”
Don McCullin

“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without

a camera.”
Dorothea Lange

“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it

still.”
Dorothea Lange

“While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell

us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is
another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.”
Dorothea Lange

“Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is

what it appears to be.”
Duane Michals

“A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.”

Edward Steichen

“Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.”

Edward Steichen

“The finished print must be created in full before the film is exposed”
Edward Weston

“The fact is, relatively few photographers ever master their medium.
Instead they allow the medium to master them”
 Edward Weston

“Only long experience will enable the photographer to subordinate

technical considerations to pictorial aims”
Edward Weston

“Learning to see in terms of the field of one lens, the scale of one
film and one paper, will accomplish a good deal more than a
smattering of knowledge about several different set of tools”
Edward Weston

“Photography provides the photographer with a means of looking

deeply into the nature of things”
Edward Weston

“When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns,

there can be no freshness of vision”
Edward Weston

“Good composition is only the strongest way of seeing the subject”

Edward Weston

“My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, or

the camera’s eye may entirely change my idea.”
Edward Weston

“The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?”
Edward Weston

“The more you photograph, the more you realize what can and what
can’t be photographed. You just have to keep doing it.”
 Eliot Porter

“I like to photograph anyone before they know what their best angles
are.”
Ellen Von Unwerth

“I am a professional photographer by trade and an amateur

photographer by vocation.”
Elliott Erwitt

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding

something interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to
do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see
them.”
Elliott Erwitt

“The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to

explain things with words.”
Elliott Erwitt

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding

something interesting an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do
with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see
them.”
Elliott Erwit

t
“It’s about reacting to what you see, hopefully without
preconception. You can find pictures anywhere. It’s simply a matter
of noticing things and organizing them. You just have to care about
what’s around you and have a concern with humanity and the human
comedy.”
Elliott Erwitt
 “The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to
explain things with words.”
Elliott Erwitt

“There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your

photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.”
Ernst Haas

“I am not interested in shooting new things I am interested to see

things new.”
Ernst Haas

“If I can get them (my students) to think, get them to feel, and get
them to see, then I've done all that I can as a teacher”
Eugene Smith

“Iron clad rules always rust”

Eugene Smith

“I try to take what voice I have and give it to those who don't have
one at all”
Eugene Smith

“If the photographer is interested in the people in front of his lens,

and if he is compassionate, it’s already a lot. The instrument is not
the camera but the photographer.”
Eve Arnold

“If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is
compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the
camera, that is the instrument.”
Eve Arnold
“I began to realize that the camera sees the world differently than the
human eye and that sometimes those differences can make a
photograph more powerful than what you actually observed.”
Galen Rowell

“Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame.

When you put four edges around some facts, you change those
facts.”
Garry Winogrand

I have a burning desire to see what things look like photographed by

me
Garry Winogrand

“Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But
above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know
the key to photography.”
George Eastman

“Every artist has a central story to tell, and the difficulty, the
impossible task, is trying to present that story in pictures”
Gregory Crewdson

“I love this life. I feel like I am always catching my breath and saying,
‘Oh! Will you look at that?’ Photography has been my way of bearing
witness to the joy I find in seeing the extraordinary in ordinary life.
You don’t look for pictures. Your pictures are looking for you.”
Harold Feinstein

“In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little,
human detail can become a Leitmotiv.”
 Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Photography has not changed since its origin except in its technical
aspects”
Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Manufactured or stage photography does not concern me”

Henri Cartier-Bresson

“With language everyone learns the grammar first. In photography,

one must learn visual language”
Henri Cartier-Bresson

“All that one takes to heart, come together in the viewfinder of the
camera. That joy will exist for me forever”
Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson

“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of

a second, of the significance of an event.”
Henri Cartier-Bresson

“Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson

“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of

a second, of the significance of an event.”
Henri Cartier-Bresson
 “I don't work on anyone's formula”
Imogen Cunningham

About Black and Whites: “You can do more elusive things with it.
Color is so realistic ”
Imogen Cunningham

“I'm not impulsive and I don't think I'm the greatest ever. I just want
to work for my own satisfaction”
Imogen Cunningham

“It seems like the whole world has turned into photographers”
Imogen Cunningham

“Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take

tomorrow.”
Imogen Cunningham

“The formula for doing a good job in photography is to think like a

poet.”
Imogen Cunningham

“A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the

heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is,
in a word, effective.”
Irving Penn

“Everything always looked better in black and white. Everything

always looked as if it were the first time; there’s always more people
in a black and white photograph. It just makes it seem that there were
more people at a gig, more people at a football match, than with
colour photography. Everything looks more exciting.”
 Jack Lowden

“I take photographs with love, so I try to make them art objects. But I
make them for myself first and foremost, that is important”
Jacques Henri Lartigue

“Learn how to look, how to love. It's the same with painting and
writing”
Jacques Henri Lartigue

“It’s weird that photographers spend years or even a whole lifetime,

trying to capture moments that added together, don’t even amount to
a couple of hours.”
James Lalropui Keivom

“In the world of photography, you get to share a captured moment

with other people.”
James Wilson

“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty four times per

second.”
Jean-Luc Godard

“When you photograph a face… you photograph the soul behind it.”
Jean-Luc Godard

“We don’t learn from our good images; we learn from the ones that
can be improved on.”
Jen Rozenbaum

“If you want to be a better photographer, stand in front of more

interesting stuff.”
 Jim Richardson

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

“You cannot possibly hit the shutter without leaving a piece of you in
the image.”
Joe Buissink

“I have decided that seeing this is worth recording”

John Berger

“What distinguishes a very memorable photograph from the most

banal snapshot is the degree to which the photograph explains the
message, the degree to which the photograph makes the
photographer's decision transparent and comprehensible”
John Berger

“What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s

gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”
Karl Lagerfeld

“If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug around a
camera.”
Lewis Hine

“If you see something that moves you, and then snap it, you keep a
moment.”
Linda McCartney
“My interest in photography is not to capture an image I see or even
have in my mind, but to explore the potential of moments I can only
begin to imagine.”
Lois Greenfield

“The point of photography is to make ordinary people react”

Lord Snowdon

“To me, photography is to move people, to make people think”

Lord Snowdon

“Photography has nothing to do with cameras.”

Lucas Gentry

“To master a medium you must despise it too a bit too. That means
you must be so expert and so sure of yourself in that medium that it
is no longer amusing or interesting to you. It becomes a chore”
Man Ray

“An artist has to rely on publicity, otherwise he can't have

exhibitions”
Man Ray

“Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a

second.”
Marc Riboud

“Part of the role of photography is to exaggerate, and that is an

aspect that I have to puncture. I do that by showing the world as I
really find it.”
Martin Parr
 “Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly
complicated to make it really work.”
Martin Parr

“Results are uncertain even among the more experienced

photographers.”
Matthew Brady

“We see in colour all the time. Everything around us is in colour.

Black and white is therefore immediately an interpretation of the
world, rather than a copy.”
Michael Kenna

“The golden rule in the arts, as far as I am concerned, is that all rules
are meant to be broken.”
Michael Kenna

“I'd take her (his girlfriend) to church, and then I'd go out
photographing while I was waiting. As far as I could tell, we were
both doing the same thing”
Minor White

“Once in a while I'll say “What idiot did that?”” I couldn't have done
it.” But it's on my roll of film”
Minor White

“When gifts are given to me through my camera I accept them

graciously”
Minor White

“Very often in photographing, intellectually I know instantly that the

photograph is there. Sometimes emotionally I feel it very powerfully.
 Other times I don't feel it at all. But I expose anyway, trusting
something in me”
Minor White

“God and creativity are together”

Minor White

“Everything in the world has been photographed a few million times”

Minor White

“All we have to look for now is, as a picture, does it move my

heartstring?”
Minor White

“I am always mentally photographing everything as practice”

Minor White

“ I find “Letting things happen” relaxing, a playful vacation.

Stimulating pictures almost always result”
Minor White

“I am trying to be in contact with my Creator when I photograph”

Minor White

“The camera is much more than a recording apparatus, it is a

medium via which messages reach us from another world.”
Orson Welles

“It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s
another thing to make a portrait of who they are.”
Paul Caponigro

“Objectivity is of the very essence of photography, its contribution

and at the same time its limitation”
Paul Strand
 “The artist should not be asked for the philosophy of life upon he
bases his work. The work is the basis. The work is the thing itself”
Paul Strand

“Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really

sees.”
Paul Strand

“It is one thing to photograph people. It is another to make others

care about them by revealing the core of their humanness.”
Paul Strand

“Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really

sees.”
Paul Strand

“Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase.”

Percy W. Harris

“Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.”

Peter Adams

“Photography is not about cameras, gadgets and gizmos.

Photography is about photographers. A camera didn’t make a great
picture any more than a typewriter wrote a great novel.”
Peter Adams

“Photography gives you the opportunity to use your sensibility and

everything you are to say something about and be part of the world
around you. In this way, you might discover who you are, and with a
little luck, you might discover something much larger than yourself.”
Peter Lindbergh

“Your inspiration is better if it comes from many different sources

and your sensibilities will transform all those influences and
 inspiration into your own visual world. It’s like reading the book
instead of watching the movie.”
Peter Lindbergh

“We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to

us.”
Ralph Hattersley

“There’s a time when people say your work is revolutionary, but you
have to keep being revolutionary. I can’t keep shooting pop stars all
my life. You have to keep changing, keep pushing yourself, looking
for the new, the unusual.”
John Rankin

“All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”

Robert Capa

“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”
Robert Capa

“We are fishermen with hooks and lines”

Robert Doisneau

“The best photos, the ones that are remembered, are the ones that
have first passed trough the person's mind before being restored by
the camera”
Robert Doisneau

“There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the
moment.”
Robert Frank

“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.”
Robert Frank
 “The eye should learn to listen before it looks.”
Robert Frank

“Above all, life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference”

Robert Frank

“There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a

photograph.”
Robert Heinecken

“The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer.”
Robert Mapplethorpe

“Spend more time working on posing, expressions, and creating

energy between the couple and you they need to feel the energy that
makes them react. Remember, reaction is part of the pose.”
Roberto Valenzuela

“A camera is a SAVE button for the mind’s eye.”

Roger Kingston

“What the photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once”

Roland Barthes

“Photographs open doors into the past, but they also allow a look
into the future.”
Sally Mann

“The picture that you took with your camera is the imagination you
want to create with reality.”
Scott Lorenzo

“There’s something strange and powerful about black and white

imagery
Stefan Kanfer
“My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my
camera is my passport.”
Steve McCurry

“I think life is too short not to be doing something which you really
believe in.”
Steve McCurry

“The art of photography is all about directing the attention of the

viewer.”
Steven Pinker

“Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create

the illusion of being in an interesting world.”
Steven Pinker

“The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise don’t

belong. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of
separation.”
Susan Meiselas

“Today everything exists to end in a photograph.”

Susan Sontag

“The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.”

Susan Sontag

“When you photograph people in color, you photograph their

clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you
photograph their souls!”
Ted Grant

“Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of

embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a
lifetime of pleasure.”
Tony Benn
“You’ve got to push yourself harder. You’ve got to start looking for
pictures nobody else could take. You’ve got to take the tools you
have and probe deeper.”
William Albert Allard

“When I photograph, what I’m really doing is seeking answers to

things.”
Wynn Bullock

“The Earth is Art, The Photographer is only a Witness ”

Yann Arthus Bertrand

“The darkroom should be a logical extension of the photographer's

eye”
Yousuf Karsh

“I try to photograph people's spirits and thoughts”

Yousuf Karsh

“I am not a judge, I am a recorder”

Yousuf Karsh

“Be a student of humanities because if you are, it makes you a more

sensitive recorder of life”
Yousuf Karsh

“Memorable photographs have been made with the simplest of

cameras using available light”
Yousuf Karsh

“The use of the camera should become second nature”

Yousuf Karsh

“Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.”

Yousuf Karsh
“Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are
the true lens of the camera.”
Yousuf Karsh