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Photography Quotes

1.
It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart and head.
Henri Cartier-Bresson

It is an illusion that pictures are taken with the camera... they are created with the sight, emotion and intellect.
Authors on Photography Quotes: Henri Cartier-Bresson Jay Maisel Ansel Adams Susan Sontag Chuck Close Elliott Erwitt Bill Jay Garry Winogrand Sebastiao Salgado Edward Weston John Sexton Walker Evans Diane Arbus Sam Abell Joyce Tenneson Wynn Bullock Alfred Eisenstaedt James Nachtwey Ernst Haas Robert Adams John Szarkowski Andreas Feininger Harry Callahan Ruth Bernhard Keith Carter Edward Steichen Berenice Abbott Frederick Sommer Richard Avedon Minor White David Hockney Alfred Stieglitz Josef Koudelka
2.
A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person.
Saul Leiter

A pane of glass bejeweled with droplets of water fascinates me more than an image of a renowned individual.
3.
I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical.
Trent Parke

I am always searching for illumination. Illumination transforms the mundane into the extraordinary.
4.
Only photography has been able to divide human life into a series of moments, each of them has the value of a complete existence.
Eadweard Muybridge

Only photography has been able to break human life into a succession of instants, each possessing the worth of a complete existence.
5.
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.
Galen Rowell

'Every day on Earth is a precious gift, and each sunrise and sunset should be savored. A wise photographer knows this and doesn't squander it.'
6.
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.
Ansel Adams

'Snapshots are not only taken through a lens; they embody the visualizations you have observed, the literature you have studied, the melodies you have heard, and the individuals you have cherished.'
7.
I like to make people a little uncomfortable. It encourages them to examine who they are and why they think the way they do.
Sally Mann

I enjoy causing people unease. It encourages them to reflect on who they are and why their beliefs exist.
8.
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.
Mark Rothko

I'm not an intellectualist. I'm not focused on the link between hue or shape or anything else. I'm concerned only with conveying basic human feelings: anguish, rapture, doom, and so on.
9.
Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.
Pablo Picasso

Some artists transmute the sun into a yellow speck, others transmute a yellow speck into the sun.
10.
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.
Nan Goldin

11.
The biggest cliche in Photography is Sunrise and Sunset.
Catherine Opie

The most overused scene in Photography is Dawn and Dusk.
12.
[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?
Laurel Nakadate

13.
Wherever there is light, one can photograph.
Alfred Stieglitz

Wherever illumination exists, one can capture an image.
14.
Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life.
Vincent Van Gogh

Vibrancy in a painting is akin to fervor in existence.
15.
The object of art is not to reproduce reality, but to create a reality of the same intensity.
Alberto Giacometti

16.
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.
Steve McCurry

17.
Surrealism is destructive,
but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision.
Salvador Dali

18.
Nothing is ever the same twice because everything is always gone forever, and yet each moment has infinite photographic possibilities.
Michael Kenna

19.
The body says what words cannot.
Martha Graham

20.
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.
Man Ray

21.
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.
Joan Miro

22.
If you want to be a photographer, first leave home
Steve McCurry

23.
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.
William Eggleston

24.
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.
Peter Lindbergh

25.
Photography allows you to learn to look and see. You begin to see things you'd never paid attention to.
Saul Leiter

26.
The desire to discover, the desire to move, to capture the flavor, three concepts that describe the art of photography.
Helmut Newton

27.
What I like best about underwater photography is giving a visual voice to the invisible. What I like least is the prospect of drowning.
David Doubilet

28.
One eye of the photographer looks wide open through the viewfinder, the other, the closed looks into his own soul.
Henri Cartier-Bresson

29.
My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport.
Steve McCurry

30.
If I knew how to take a good photograph, I'd do it every time.
Robert Doisneau

31.
Often people ask what I'm photographing, which is a hard question to answer. And the best what I've come up with is I just say: Life today.
William Eggleston

32.
Just as typography is human speech translated into what can be read, so photography is the translation of reality into a readable image.
Herbert Bayer

33.
My images are unashamedly idyllic and romantic, a kind of enchanted Africa. They're my elegy to a world that is steadily, tragically vanishing.
Nick Brandt

34.
You can observe a lot by just watching.
Yogi Berra

35.
I don't deliberately look for something dark or bleak or disconnected, in fact that's not something I'm even conscious of in the work as I'm making it. I'm always trying to create beauty, reveal hope, show the sense of longing that exists in isolation and loneliness, and capture the search for something greater inside all of my subjects.
Gregory Crewdson

36.
Yes, photography saved my life. Every time I go through something scary, traumatic, I survive by taking pictures.
Nan Goldin

37.
Art can no longer be merely a mirror, it must act as the organizer of the people's consciousness... No form of representation is so readily comprehensible to the masses as photography.
El Lissitzky

38.
My pictures must first be beautiful, but that beauty is not enough. I strive to convey an underlying edge of anxiety, of isolation, of fear.
Gregory Crewdson

39.
I think I’ve said this before many times—that photography allows you to learn to look and see. You begin to see things you had never paid any attention to. And as you photograph, one of the benefits is that the world becomes a much richer, juicier, visual place. Sometimes it is almost unbearable — it is too interesting. And it isn’t always just the photos you take that matters. It is looking at the world and seeing things that you never photograph that could be photographs if you had the energy to keep taking pictures every second of your life.
Saul Leiter

40.
The observer must learn to look at the picture as a graphic representation of a mood and not as a representation of objects.
Wassily Kandinsky

41.
Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.
Yousuf Karsh

42.
A photograph can be an instant of life captured for eternity that will never cease looking back at you.
Brigitte Bardot

43.
The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don't have to explain things with words.
Elliott Erwitt

44.
A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free.
Nikos Kazantzakis

45.
Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow.
Imogen Cunningham

46.
Typography can be as exciting as illustration and photography.
Herb Lubalin

47.
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

48.
When van Gogh paints sunflowers, he reveals, or achieves, the vivid relation between himself, as man, and the sunflower, as sunflower, at that quick moment of time. His painting does not represent the sunflower itself. We shall never know what the sunflower itself is. And the camera will visualize the sunflower far more perfectly than van Gogh can.
D. H. Lawrence

49.
If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that's a good picture.
Eddie Adams

50.
Life wanted faces that would express what we wanted to tell. Not just the unusual or striking face, but the face that would speak out the message from the printed page. I am always looking for some typical person or face that will tie the picture essay together in a human way.
Margaret Bourke-White