1.
Photography means releasing oneself from one type of gravity and placing oneself in a space where a different force is trying to move you.
Shomei Tomatsu
2.
In short, [photography] is a matter of turning loneliness into thoughts.
Shomei Tomatsu
3.
A single photograph is a mere fragment of an experience and, simultaneously, the distillation of the entire body of one's experience.
Shomei Tomatsu
4.
Sometimes a photographer is a passenger, sometimes a person who stays in one place. What he watches changes constantly, but his watching never changes. He doesn't examine like a doctor, defend like a lawyer, analyze like a scholar, support like a priest, make people laugh like a comedian, or intoxicate like a singer. He only watches. This is enough. No, this is all I can do. All a photographer can do is watch. Therefore, a photographer has to watch all the time. He must face the object and make his entire body an eye. A photographer is someone who wagers everything on seeing.
Shomei Tomatsu
5.
In this, photography is the same thing as love. When my gaze, diving into the sea as my subject, converges with the act of photography, hot sparks fly at the point of intersection.
Shomei Tomatsu
6.
A photographer looks at everything, which is why he must look from beginning to end. Face the subject head-on, stay fixed, turn the entire body into an eye and face the world.
Shomei Tomatsu
7.
If I had seven lives, I'd be a photographer in every one.
Shomei Tomatsu