On Photography Quotes

I give the moment permanence.

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.

I knew my destiny when I first experienced Yosemite.

Rather than a profession, photography has always been a passion for me, a passion closer to an obsession.

The video camera dominates art. It's a bore, it makes everything look a bit the same. If you look at things with a pencil and paper in your hand, you are going to see far more.

We do not make photographs with our cameras. We make them with our minds, with our hearts, with our ideas.

The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.

Photography, when used as a representational art, is not a mere copy of nature. This is proved by the rarity of the 'good' photograph.

The invention of photography destroyed the canons of representational, imitative art.

The greatest tool at our command is the very thing that is photography. Light. Light is our paintbrush and it is a most willing tool in the hands of the one who studies it with a sufficient care.

If you see something that moves you, and then snap it, you keep a moment.

Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.

Nothing seemed to me more appropriate than to project an image of our time with absolute fidelity to nature by means of photography.

I was drawn to photography as an extension of film, and the beauty of film is that it's a sensuous, fetishistic medium.

Visual ideas combined with technology combined with personal interpretation equals photography. Each must hold it's own; if it doesn't, the thing collapses.

No place is boring, if you've had a good night's sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.

I was invited to photograph Hollywood. They asked me what I would like to photograph. I said, Ugly men.

When people talk to me about picture hunters, I very quietly laugh. I'm not a hunter of pictures, I'm a fisher of pictures.

Life is once. Forever.

Life itself is not the reality. We are the ones who put life into stones and pebbles.

The photograph is not only a pictorial report; it is also a psychological report. It represents the feelings and point of view of the intelligence behind the camera.

A photographer must always work with the greatest respect for his subject and in terms of his own point of view.

We are in a privileged and sometimes happy position. We see a great deal of the world. Our obligation is to pass it on to others.

Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure.

Notebook. No photographer should be without one!

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

For those aspiring to make a living from travel photography, it's a sad fact that the boring shots are the shots that are going to make you money.

Photography was my choice of weapons.

Now people ask whether photography is art, but I think the question is of absolutely no interest.

One reason I was interested in photography was to get away from the preciousness of the art object.

I embrace the abstract in photography and exist on a few bits of order extracted from the chaos of reality.

To be a photographer, one must photograph. No amount of book learning, no checklist of seminars attended, can substitute for the simple act of making pictures.

The important thing is, you have to have something important to say about the world.

Bad weather makes for good photography.

I like the idea that the sacred photo framing process is equally violatible and I think that's partly a carryover from the way I deal with structures to the way I deal with photography.

The pictures do not lie, but neither do they tell the whole story. They are merely a record of time passing, the outward evidence.

Essentially what photography is is life lit up.

I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help.

Photography is very subjective. Photography is not a document on which a report can be made. It is a subjective document. Photography is a false witness, a lie.

No language on earth speaks as comprehensively as photography, always providing that we follow the chemical and optic and physical path to demonstrable truth, and understand physiognomy.

Photography is not cute cats, nor nudes, motherhood or arrangements of manufactured products. Under no circumstances it is anything ever anywhere near a beach.

If I had been born one or two hundred years ago, I might have been a sculptor, but photography is a very quick way to see, to make sculpture.

Any familiarity with photographic history shows that manipulation is integral to photography.

Photography [can] be seen as a system of representation that you bring to bear on other systems.

You push the button, we do the rest.

If you are not willing to see more than is visible, you won't see anything.

Perishability in a photograph is important in a picture. If a photograph looks perishable we say, "Gee, I'm glad I have that moment."

The word 'art' is very slippery. It really has no importance in relation to one's work. I work for the pleasure, for the pleasure of the work, and everything else is a matter for the critics.

Beauty can be seen in all things.

In photography we must learn to seek, not the 'picture,' not the aesthetic of tradition, but the ideal instrument of expression, the self-sufficient vehicle for education.