On Photography Quotes

We have a few things in common - smoking, drinking, and women. Photography just gets us out of the house. (To photographer Juergen Teller)

My creative process begins when I get out with the camera and interact with the world. A camera is truly a license to explore. There are no uninteresting things. There are just uninterested people.

My favorite thing is to go where I've never been.

They used to photograph Shirley Temple through gauze. They should photograph me through linoleum.

Time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life.

Photographers, along with dentists, are the two professions never satisfied with what they do. Every dentist would like to be a doctor and inside every photographer is a painter trying to get out.

If you do not see what is around you every day, what will you see when you go to Tangiers?

Photography is a medium, a language, through which I might come to experience directly, live more closely with, the interaction between myself and nature.

For me it is clear that photography prizes should be for those being photographed and not for the photographers.

Photography is about light and what it does and how it is captured on a piece of negative.

I think photography has made us see the landscape in a very dull way - that's one of its effects. It's not spatial.

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.

If you want to make more interesting pictures, become a more interesting person.

I used photography to distance myself from a world that I loathed and was powerless to improve.

Once the amateur's naive approach and humble willingness to learn fades away, the creative spirit of good photography dies with it. Every professional should remain always in his heart an amateur.

Photography is the truth if it’s being handled by a truthful person.

Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.

When you approach something to photograph it, first be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence. Then don't leave until you have captured its essence.

The photogram, or camera-less record of forms produced by light, which embodies the unique nature of the photographic process, is the real key to photography.

Working myself into a position of total versatility, so that I can do anything I want to do at the time I want to do it. Whether I do it or not is another question.

Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion... the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate.

A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.

This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.

There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.

It's equally hard and labor intensive to create an image on the computer as it is in a darkroom. Believe me.

It's not always easy to stand aside and be unable to do anything except record the sufferings around one.

The point of my photography has always been to challenge myself, to go a little further than my Germanic discipline and Teutonic nature would traditionally permit me to.

I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.

To me photography must suggest, not insist or explain.

Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits.

The formula for doing a good job in photography is to think like a poet.

Photography allows you to be a part of the action and document stories. It is a perfect extension of my body. I can take it pretty much anywhere and tell a story with a photograph.

Working on photography is working on oneself.

"Utter truth is essential, and that is what stirs me when I look through the camera."

Photography my passion, the search for truth, my obsession.

Photography to me is catching a moment which is passing, and which is true.

One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind.

It matters little how much equipment we use; it matters much that we be masters of all we do use.

I'm always mentally photographing everything as practice.

A photographer must be prepared to catch and hold on to those elements which give distinction to the subject or lend it atmosphere.

You are either born to be a photographer or not. The art of photography is not something you can learn in the classroom or by watching someone do it.

Seeing is more than a physiological phenomenon... We see not only with our eyes but with all that we are and all that our culture is. The artist is a professional see-er.

I suffered first as a child from discrimination, poverty ... So I think it was a natural follow from that that I should use my camera to speak for people who are unable to speak for themselves.

I try with my pictures to raise a question, to provoke a debate, so that we can discuss problems together and come up with solutions.

The gear you can't afford is not the barrier keeping you from success. Gear has very little to do with photography.

Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.

Photography is a demanding action sport. The light can change so quickly. I often find myself sprinting so that I can catch the perfect light falling on a photogenic subject.

The secret of photography is, the camera takes on the character and personality of the handler.

To suggest is to create; to describe is to destroy.

Significance is inherent in the human body.