Photographer Quotes

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.

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

In the next 25 years, the human race will have to decide whether or not to preserve the bestiary of Nature's living masterpieces. Ashes and Snow is not meant to tell people to do some things and not to do other things. It's meant to inspire. I hope it's not a requiem.

Gregory Colbert

The adventurer in me felt obliged to testify with a quicker instrument than a brush to the scars of the world.

Henri Cartier-Bresson

The less [government] the better. As far as your personal goals are and what you actually want to do with your life, it should never have to do with the government. You should never depend on the government for your retirement, your financial security, for anything. If you do, you're screwed... That's all the government should be: Army, Air Force, Navy, Marines... I think a lot of people are afraid of freedom. They want their lives to be controlled, to be put into a box... Why should someone put a limit on how much fun I can have, how much I can accomplish?

I am a passionate lover of the snapshot, because of all photographic images it comes closest to truth.

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

David LaChapelle

I cannot solve the problem of life by losing myself in the problem of art.

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.

There's an arc of being. There's a beginning, then the peak is reached and then there's the end. It's like the pole vaulter who begins his run, shoots up, then comes down. At the peak there is no movement. He's neither going up nor going down. It is that moment I wait for.

For every negative that is a disappointment, there is one that is a joy.

Edward S. Curtis

Photography, fortunately, to me has not only been a profession but also a contact between people - to understand human nature and record, if possible, the best in each individual.

In cities it is useless to look at the stars or to describe them, worship them, or seek direction from them. When lost, one should follow the tracks of the camels.

I loved to press the shutter, to freeze time, to turn little slices of life into rectangle rife with metaphor.

Deborah Copaken

We cannot hope to control what we do not understand, nor to confront our adversary, war, with our eyes averted.

One of our core beliefs was that significant art could be made by anyone, anywhere and anytime. You didn't have to live and work in New York City to be an artist. It was in line with the philosophy of Outsider art and movements for artistic "localism."

Black and white are the colors of photography. To me, they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected. Most of my photographs are of people; they are seen simply, as through the eyes of the man in the street. There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment. This kind of photography is realism. But realism is not enough—there has to be vision and the two together can make a good photograph. It is difficult to describe this thin line where matter ends and mind begins.

My interest in working sites is linked to an investigation of what is behind the extravagant forms and perfect lines of Hadid's Architecture; it is an interest in the relation between the elegance of her gesture and her radical way of making a building. Something very primordial and out of time is present in those situations. I think of this as a process of forming.

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.

Over the years, photography has been to me what a journal is to a writer - a record of things seen and experienced, moments in the flow of time, documents of significance to me, experiments in seeing.

Beaumont Newhall

Herein lies the main objective of portraiture and also its main difficulty. The photographer probes for the innermost. The lens sees only the surface....

Philippe Halsman

Style as a concept has been hijacked to mean elite, refined and expensive when it should be thought of as a basic expression of life in much the same way as we all identify with music or speech.

Where you point the camera is the question and the picture you get is the answer to decipher.

Robert Polidori

I'm the type of person that likes to dream big, and I've often found that every great journey begins with a dream

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