Terry Richardson Quotes

It's not who you know, it's who you blow. I don't have a hole in my jeans for nothing.

I always say I make pictures rather than take pictures.

I don't work off lights and angles; I work off emotions. A mood that I create.

I like using snapshot cameras because they're idiot-proof. I have bad eyesight, and I'm no good at focusing big cameras.

Like Robert Mapplethorpe, Helmut Newton, and so many others before me, sexual imagery has always been a part of my photography.

People go, 'What do you want to do?' What do you want to do? What are you feeling? Going into a shoot not fully knowing what I want to do—that excitement, that thing that happens, is just so powerful and makes such great pictures.

I want my photos to be fresh and urgent. A good photograph should be a call to arms.

At the beginning, people laughed at me because I was using snappies. Sometimes, a celebrity would look at my camera and go, Oh, I've got one of those. I'd feel like handing it to them and saying, Well, you take the pictures then. But I like using snapshot cameras because they're idiot-proof. I have bad eyesight, and I'm no good at focusing big cameras.

I didn't want to be a photographer. I wanted to play music and be a rock star. I didn't have a mentor telling me to take pictures and encouraging me. But when the music thing didn't work out, I became a photographer's assistant. And then I caught the bug.

It's insane, the internet. Totally craziness. Like a little cancer. People can just do whatever they want, say whatever they want, be totally anonymous. It's totally out of control.

I look fondly back on renegade days of my youth. Not the partying or anything, but it's still the spirit that I have always adhered to. When I do work that I like, it feels like a great punk song, like a burst of adrenaline. I've always kept this spirit in me, or some sort of connection to it.