On Photography Quotes

You see what you think, you see what you feel, you are what you see If with the camera you can make others see it - that is photography.

Photography is a transformation, not a reproduction.

A few words about the question of whether photography is art or not: I never understood the question.

Through photography, both artist and scientist can find a common denominator in their search for the synthesis of modern vision in time, space and structure.

The very idea of photography is as Oliver Wendell Holmes said in the 19th century, "it's a mirror with a memory."

Let a man of genius make use [of photography] as it should be used, and he will raise himself to a height that we do not know.

It's a process of getting to know people. That's what photography is to me. It's about paying attention, not screwing up and blowing a great opportunity.

A studio session ... provides the greatest chance for control. Even though there is total freedom, I still dislike studio photography and the contrived images that usually stem from this genre.

A lot of photography is making records of people, as objects, friends. It's like organizing a wardrobe - in terms of size etc.

I've had photographs taken for portraits because I very much prefer working from the photographs than from models... I couldn't attempt to do a portrait from photographs of somebody I didn't know.

In total acceptance, almost everything becomes a revelation.

Art is the splendor of reality before everything has become meaning.

Ideas and art are the possibility of an answer tomorrow.

Reality is greater than our dreams.

If I could find them (assemblages) in nature I would photograph them. I make them because through photography I have a knowledge of things that can't be found.

Everything is shared by everything else; there are no discontinuities.

To make the essence of man visible in the exposure is the highest art of photography.

Not only did she [Marilyn Monroe] master her own image, create it and ultimately control it, she was the subject of many of the great masters of photography of the 20th century.

I don't know how to say easily what I learned. One thing I can say I learned is how amazing photography could be.

If I photograph you I don't have you, I have a photograph of you. It's got its own thing. That's really what photography, still photography, is about.

My only interest in photographing is photography.

You know, you get into the business of commercial photography, and that's all you do is photograph what you know. That's what you're hired for.

Everyone concedes that photography is now a medium of exchange as much as a mode of documentation.... photographing has become the visual equivalent of cellphone chatter.

I try to take my interests and make them my work.

It's never as good the second time. Things don't get better. You can't always go back, a lot of it has been erased. The photograph is a record of it having existed.

The thing itself photographed becomes less interesting when you go back to it years later but I think the photograph becomes more important later when the reality has passed.

My taking pictures means I'm taking a series of pictures which become an essay and then get extended into a book. That's what's exciting, to take an idea and work it through to completion.

I don't speak emotionally about my pictures. That's for other people to do. I will say that I love my photographs. That's what keeps me going.

...compelling outdoor imagery always combines some kind of personal connection to nature and skillful technique. The former seems to be a form of grace, and the latter an act of the will.

There is a terrible truthfulness about photography that sometimes makes a thing look ridiculous.

I loved photography and everybody said it was a crazy thing to do because in those days nobody made it into the film business. I mean, unless you were related to somebody there was no way in.

For 'Star Wars' I had to develop a whole new idea about special effects to give it the kind of kinetic energy I was looking for. I did it with motion-control photography.

To speak technically photography is the art of writing with light. But if I want to think about it more philosophically , I can say that photography is the art of writing with time.

I guess I knew my dad was into photography, so a part of me was interested in picking it up to understand him a little better.

I love photography and art-directing is something that I really would enjoy to do.

Even before I started photography, I began to see that there was a disjunction between available languages and reality.

My wife Mariana is a good photographer too and, like me, she just picks up a camera and takes a picture when she sees something, rather than looking too deeply into it.

When you live by the sea, there are definite seasons when you can see the weather coming and going, which lends itself to photography.

The mystery isn't in the technique, it's in each of us.

I like the simple things. I don't know why. I'm that way. I came from a simple place.

I can't say what makes a picture. I can't say. It's mysterious.

I can tell you for me it goes on forever. There are some things you can't ever find out. You can't find out in one life either.

I think I came alive when I started photography.

In terms of art, the only real answer that I know of is to do it. If you don't do it, you don't know what might happen.

Mostly the subject of the photograph, which can be anyone really, coming down the street - someone that has no idea. "Heroism" in photography, just like in a novel, is for everyone.

Photography is a witness against the mistaken opinion that art is an imitation of nature.

I felt like I was in the best photography school in the world - I had Herb Ritts, Bruce Weber, Richard Avedon and Irving Penn teach me.

Photography is the only "language" understood in all parts of the world, and, bridging all nations and cultures, it links the family of man.

The photographs don't arouse me. All I can think about is the hard work it took to make them.

Photographers deal in things which are continuously vanishing.