On Photography Quotes

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.

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.

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

Photography is like a moment, an instant. You need a half-second to get the photo. So it's good to capture people when they are themselves.

You’ve gotta taste the light, like my friend and fellow shooter Chip Maury says. And when you see light like this, trust me, it’s like a strawberry sundae with sprinkles.

Unpredictability. Accidents. Not good when you’re engaging in, say, brain surgery, but when lighting...wonderful!

He made me suddenly realize that photographs could reach eternity through the moment.

People say photographs don't lie, mine do.

Photography turns people into things and their image into a mass consumer product.

I accept that all photography is voyeuristic and exploitative, and obviously I live with my own guilt and conscience. It's part of the test and I don't have a problem with it.

My greatest aim has been to advance the art of photography and to make it what I think I have, a great and truthful medium of history.

There's no such thing as a bad photograph.

I came from the outside, the rules of photography didn't interest me.

One thing that Life and I agreed right from the start was that one war photographer was enough for my family; I was to be a photographer of peace.

When we take a picture, we have a negative. We put the right solution on it and, suddenly, the picture comes to life. So what do we do? We take the negative and turn it into a positive.

I really don't have any idea about photography, but I take pictures.

Photography has a relation to intervention, but photographing is not the same as an intervening.

A photographer without a magazine behind him is like a farmer without fields.

Photography is an ambiguous challenge to chance.

Color is seductive. It changes as it interacts with other colors, it changes because of the light falling upon it, and it changes as it becomes larger in size.

The photogram, image formation outside the camera is the real key to photography,it embodies the essence... that allows us to capture light on light sensitive material without the use of any camera.

I don't care so much anymore about 'good photography'; I am gathering evidence for history.

Photography is used to give evidence, and the evidence is always deceiving.

There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described.

We look at a painting to know the painter; it's his company we are after, not his skill.

It's up to us as photographers to give voice to the natural world.

As is often said of photography, this photograph is a frozen moment. A frozen moment is not a moment at all.

Available light is any damn light that is available!

Photography is a magic thing. A thing that has mysterious odors, a little strange and frightening, something one quickly grows to love.

A lot of people think that when you have grand scenery, such as you have in Yosemite, that photography must be easy.

I like to feel that all my best photographs had strong personal visions and that a photograph that doesn't have a personal vision or doesn't communicate emotion fails.

I don't think that digital photography is romantic yet. It's not sympathetic the way that film is.

The greatest moments in life are the ones right in front of you.

Stories are one of the greatest gifts we can give to our children. Stories are equipment for life.

Instead of just recording reality, photographs have become the norm for the way things appear to us, thereby changing the very idea of reality and of realism.

Light makes photography. Embrace light.

I don't see a big difference between painting and photography. Moreover, such distinctions mean nothing to me.

I don't want anyone to appreciate the light or the palette of tones. I want my pictures to inform, to provoke discussion - and to raise money.

In the Soviet Union it was illegal to take a photograph of a train station. Look what happened to them. They tried to classify everything.

I always thought that one of the reasons why a painter likes especially to have other painters look at his or her work is the shared experience of having pushed paint around.

For me photography is not an intellectual process. It is a visual one.... Whether we like it or not, we are involved in a sensual business.

The very best pictures adapt themselves to many changes in meaning.

Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.

Nothing is ever the same as they said it was.

People think photography is about photographing. To me, it’s about relationships.

People are so wonderful that a photographer has only to wait for that breathless moment to capture what he wants on film.

In every photographer there was a painter, a true artist, awaiting expression.

A good photographer can make you look incredible, even when you're not feeling very sexy.

I say half jokingly that photography is the most difficult of the arts. It does require a certain arrogance to see and to choose. I feel myself walking on a tightrope instead of on the ground.