Annie Leibovitz Quotes

I didn't want to let women down. One of the stereotypes I see breaking is the idea of aging and older women not being beautiful.

One doesn't stop seeing. One doesn't stop framing. It doesn't turn off and turn on. It's on all the time.

Everyone has a point of view. Some people call it style, but what we're really talking about is the guts of a photograph. When you trust your point of view, that's when you start taking pictures.

There's an idea that it's hard to be a woman artist. People assume that women have fewer opportunities, less power. But it's not any harder to be a woman artist than to be a male artist. We all take what we are given and use the parts of ourselves that feed the work. We make our way. Photographers, men and women, are particularly lucky. Photography lets you find yourself. It is a passport to people and places and to possibilities.

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.

A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.

Things happen in front of you. That's perhaps the most wonderful and mysterious aspect of photography.

A lot can be told from what happens in between the main moments.

I wish that all of nature's magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed.

Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy - your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself.

When I'm asked about my work, I try to explain that there is no mystery involved. It is work. But things happen all the time that are unexpected, uncontrolled, unexplainable, even magical. The work prepares you for that moment. Suddenly the clouds roll in and the soft light you longed for appears.

I feel a responsibility to my backyard. I want it to be taken care of and protected.

I’ve said about a million times that the best thing a young photographer can do is to stay close to home. Start with your friends and family, the people who will put up with you. Discover what it means to be close to your work, to be intimate with a subject. Measure the difference between that and working with someone you don't know as much about. Of course there are many good photographs that have nothing to do with staying close to home, and I guess what I'm really saying is that you should take pictures of something that has meaning for you

I'm more interested in being good than being famous.

As a young person, and I know it’s hard to believe that I was shy, but you could take your camera, and it would take you to places: it was like having a friend, like having someone to go out with and look at the world. I would do things with a camera I wouldn’t do normally if I was just by myself.

Nature is so powerful, so strong. It takes you to a place within yourself.

In this day and age of things moving so, so fast, we still long for things to stop, and we as a society love the still image. Every time there is some terrible or great moment, we remember the stills.

A photograph is just a tiny slice of a subject. A piece of them in a moment. It seems presumptuous to think you can get more than that.

You don't have to sort of enhance reality. There is nothing stranger than truth.

Photography's like this baby that needs to be fed all the time. It's always hungry.

You have trust in what you think. If you splinter yourself and try to please everyone, you can't.

In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative.

When you are on assignment, film is the least expensive thing in a very practical sense. Your time, the person's time, turns out to be the most valuable thing.

I don't think there is anything wrong with white space. I don't think it's a problem to have a blank wall.

The camera makes you forget you're there. It's not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.

When I take a picture I take 10 percent of what I see.

I was out there with the White House press squad, and after his helicopter took off, and the carpet rolled up...This wasn't a photograph that others were taking, but I continued to take pictures.

Most people, especially successful people, are hard-working. They want to participate. They want to do things well.

I was scared to do anything in the studio because it felt so claustrophobic. I wanted to be somewhere where things could happen and the subject wasn't just looking back at you.

You have trust in what you think. If you splinter yourself and try to please everyone, you can’t. It’s important to stay the course. I don’t think I would have lasted this long if I’d listened to anyone. You have to listen somewhat and then put that to the side and know that what you do matters.

I actually love talking about taking pictures, and I think that helps everyone.

There must be a reason why photographers are not very good at verbal communication. I think we get lazy.

What I learned from Lennon was something that did stay with me my whole career, which is to be very straightforward. I actually love talking about taking pictures, and I think that helps everyone.

All dancers are, by and large, a photographer's dream. They communicate with their bodies and they are trained to be completely responsive to a collaborative situation.

A very subtle difference can make the picture or not.

I’d like to think that the actions we take today will allow others in the future to discover the wonders of landscapes we helped protect but never had the chance to enjoy ourselves.

Everyone keeps asking you for pictures, and after a while you get tired of that. I always say, They are in the archives.

If it makes you cry, it goes in the show.

I still need the camera because it is the only reason anyone is talking to me.

I fight to take a good photograph every single time.

I shoot a little bit, maybe two rolls, medium format, which is 20 pictures, and if it's not working, I change the position.

It's a heavy weight, the camera. Now we have modern and lightweight, small plastic cameras, but in the '70s they were heavy metal.

What I am interested in now is the landscape. Pictures without people. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually there are no people in my pictures. It is so emotional.

My lens of choice was always the 35 mm. It was more environmental. You can't come in closer with the 35 mm.

I think self-portraits are very difficult. I’ve always seen mine as straightforward, very stripped down, hair pulled back. No shirt. Whatever light happened to be available. I’d want it to be very graphic – about darkness and light. No one else should be there, but I’m scared to do it by myself. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. The whole idea of a self-portrait is strange. I’m so strongly linked to how I see through the camera that to get to the other side of it would be difficult. It would be as if I were taking a photograph in the dark.

When you go to take someone's picture, the first thing they say is, what you want me to do? Everyone is very awkward.

I feel very proud of the work from the '80s because it is very bright and colorful.

The first thing I did with my very first camera was climb Mt. Fuji. Climbing Mt. Fuji is a lesson in determination and moderation. It would be fair to ask if I took the moderation part to heart. But it certainly was a lesson in respecting your camera. If I was going to live with this thing, I was going to have to think about what that meant. There were not going to be any pictures without it.

At my Rolling Stones' tour, the camera was a protection. I used it in a Zen way.

My hope is that we continue to nurture the places that we love, but that we also look outside our immediate worlds.