Quotes from Imogen Cunningham

I don't talk about success. I don't know what it is. Wait until I'm dead.

I became kind of a drop-out in science after I came back to America. I wanted to photograph.

I was brought up on art. My father thought I had a great hand at art and sent me to art school. But he did not want me to become a photographer.

I'd never kill myself for a man. I wouldn't do it for anybody.

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

Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow.

Everybody who does anything for the public can be criticized. There's always someone who doesn't like it.

I just believe in working. I'm not one of those romantic explainers of my own individual point of view.

I don't think there's any such thing as teaching people photography, other than influencing them a little. People have to be their own learners. They have to have a certain talent.

There are certain things you don't discuss with Ansel, especially if you don't agree.

I think San Francisco is the best place in the whole world for an easy life.

When you do portraits professionally it's not a desire, it's for money.

It's silly to keep people alive who have a terrible disease.

When people ask me silly questions about my private life, I just say, I don't discuss that.

I was poor. When you're poor you work, and when you're rich you expect somebody to hand it to you. So I think being reasonably poor is very good for people.

Get it out of your historic head.

I turn people into human beings by not making them into gods.

I don't know what love means.

I don't resent anything.

Anybody is influenced by where and how he lives.

A woman said to me when she first sat down, You're photographing the wrong side of my face. I said, Oh, is there one?

I don't love the world. I think Jupiter should have hit us.

Some people say to me, Isn't it too bad that people discovered you so late? I never thought that.

Well, I turn people into human beings by not making them into gods.