Photography Quotations

Photography is...

"an austere and blazing poetry of the real" -- Ansel Adams
"the recording of strangeness and beauty with beguiling precision" -- Sebastian Smee

"a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality" -- Alfred Stieglitz
"the dominant and fascinating and only folk art of the twentieth century" -- Sir John Rotherstein
"(a means by which we)...learn to see the ordinary" -- David Bailey
"a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. The contest can be held anywhere ..." -- John Szarkowski
"my meditation" -- Czar Anthony Lopez
"a strong tool, a propaganda device, and a weapon for the defense of the environment...and therefore for the fostering of a healthy human race and even very likely for its survival." -- Eliot Porter
"the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression." -- Henri Cartier-Bresson

A camera...

"is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera" -- Dorothea Lange
"has interesting ideas of its own" -- John Szarkowski.

A photograph is...

"The basic material of photographs is not intrinsically beautiful. It's not like ivory or tapestry or bronze or oil on canvas. You're not supposed to look at the thing, you’re supposed to look through it. It's a window." -- John Szarkowski.

On creativity

“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs." -- Ansel Adams

“My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, or the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.” -- Edward Weston

“Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.” -- Minor White

“Which of the photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow.” -- Imogen Cunningham

“I do not object to retouching, dodging or accentuation as long as they do not interfere with the natural qualities of photographic technique.” -- Alfred Stieglitz

“Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts.” -- Garry Winogrand

“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.” -- Henri Cartier-Bresson

“There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph.” -- Robert Heinecken

“If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera.” -- Lewis Hine

“Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.” -- Yousuf Karsh

“Photography is truth.” -- Jean-Luc Godard

“There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.” -- Ernst Haas

“When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.” -- Alfred Eisenstaedt

“It is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph.” -- Robert Frank

“The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer” --- Gordon Parks

“Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.” --- Walker Evans

“At 42, I decided to become a photographer because it offered a means of creative thought and action. I didn't rationalize this, I just felt it intuitively and followed my intuition, which I have never regretted.” -- Wynne Bullock

“I've never made any picture, good or bad, without paying for it in emotional turmoil.” -- W. Eugene Smith

“Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.” -- Berenice Abbott

“It is one thing to photograph people. It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their humanness.” -- Paul Strand

“Photographs open doors into the past, but they also allow a look into the future.” -- Sally Mann

From the history of photography

"Photography as a fad is well-nigh on its last legs, thanks principally to the bicycle craze" -- Alfred Stieglitz, in the American Annual of Photography 1897.