Quotes from Bill Brandt

It is the gift of seeing the life around them clearly and vividly, as something that is exciting in its own right. It is an innate gift, varying in intensity with the individual's temperament and environment.

Sometimes they are a matter of luck; the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates.

I consider it essential that the photographer should do his own printing and enlarging. The final effect of the finished print depends so much on these operations.

Photography is not a sport. It has no rules. Everything must be dared and tried!

I am not interested in rules or conventions. Photography is not a sport.

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

The photographer must possess and preserve the receptive faculties of a child who looks at the world for the first time.

Sometimes they are a matter of luck the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates.

Most photographers would feel a certain embarrassment in admitting publicly that they carried within them a sense of wonder, yet without it they would not produce the work they do, whatever their particular field.

It is part of the photographer's job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country.

And only the photographer himself knows the effect he wants. He should know by instinct, grounded in experience, what subjects are enhanced by hard or soft, light or dark treatment.

Photography is still a very new medium and everything must be tried and dare.