American Photographer Quotes

I was working with mud and photographs and thread, eyelashes, carrots and acetone... I was throwing radios off buildings and... remember floating styrofoam commas down the Milwaukee River.

William Wegman (photographer)

Writers have written eloquently of the joys of walking, but the magic of walking is something more than pleasure. It is a true magic, a psychophysical alchemy, which transforms the body and the mind.

In Egypt: Under no conditions, under threat of death could anyone kill a cat. People were exceuted for even killing a cat accidentally. And when a cat died, the whole family, and probably their closest friends, went into mourning, the measure of their personal loss signalled by their shaving off their eyebrows.

I have always tried to keep truth in my photographs. My work, whether realistic or abstract, has always dealt with a form of religion or imagination.

Ralph Eugene Meatyard

Usually I think if there is something imperfect in a photograph it makes the picture more real. Photographs that are slick, smooth, and imperfect seem less honest to me.

People who hate what I make hate me, too. They must think I am a demon or some kind of evil sorcerer. Those who understand what I do appreciate the determination, love, and courage it takes to find wonder and beauty in people who are considered by society to be damaged, unclean, dysfunctional, or wretched.

Joel-Peter Witkin

You will, in time, see and show others not just the superficial, but the details, the meanings, and the implications of all that you look at...

I know that I am one with beauty and that my comrades are one. Let our souls be mountains, Let our spirits be stars, Let our hearts be worlds.

I read the first edition of 'Mein Kampf' when it came out in 1923 and even then I knew Hitler meant what he said. I knew the history of anti-Semitism going back for centuries, and I knew all about pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe. When I grew up and whent to school in Moscow, I experienced anti-Semitism and the restrictions on where Jews could live and work. Hitler systemized anti-Semitism. Pogroms are my business... Oh yes, I could be a professor of anti-Semitism.

In my work, the information is the least important part. It's there, and the work wouldn't mean the same thing without it, but it isn't structured around the information. The most interesting part to me is the visual play... looking at this little universe of representation that I can make out of the world.

I didn't want to make 'high' art, I had no interest in using paint, I wanted to find something that anyone could relate to without knowing about contemporary art. I wasn't thinking in terms of precious prints or archival quality; I didn't want the work to seem like a commodity.

Toys are intriguing, and I want to see what I can do with them. On a deeper level, they represent one way that society socializes its young

David Levinthal

In a world of disturbing images, the general body of photography is bland, dealing complacently with nature and treating our preconceptions as insights. Strange, private worlds rarely slip past our guard...

Henry Holmes Smith

I was brought in, not in the photographic department at all, I was brought in on a thing called Special Skills. I was to do posters, pamphlets, murals, propaganda in general, you know.

For me it is not a detachment to take a picture. It's a way of touching somebody - it's a caress… I think that you can actually give people access to their own soul.

The world is full of fictional characters looking for their stories

Happiness is a sort of perfume. You can't pour it on somebody else without getting a few drops on yourself.

James Van Der Zee

Reporters listen, photographers look. If you are doing your job seriously as a photojournalist, your sight must be the primary sense that you use at all times.

Live fast, die young and have a good-looking corpse.

Besides combining her greatest skill and artistry in the production of snowflakes, Nature generously fashions the most beautiful specimens on a very thin plane so that they are specially adapted for photomicrographical study.

Wilson A. Bentley

I believe in goodness
Mercy and charity
I believe in a universal spirit
I believe in casting bread
Upon the waters

You just do what you love, and then a style happens later on.

David LaChapelle

I think about photographs as being full, or empty. You picture something in a frame and it's got lots of accounting going on in it-stones and buildings and trees and air - but that's not what fills up a frame. You fill up the frame with feelings, energy, discovery, and risk, and leave room enough for someone else to get in there.

Joel Meyerowitz

To photograph is often compared to an act of redemption - to select from an infinite number of choices that which is to be remembered.

The desert... may serve better as the backdrop for the problematic relationship between man and the environment. The human struggle, the successes... both noble and foolish, are readily apparent in the desert. Symbols and relationships seem to arise that stand for the human condition itself.

Richard Misrach