Quotes from Dorothea Lange

Life, for people, begins to crumble on the edges; they don't realize it.

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.

It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.

That frame of mind that you need to make fine pictures of a very wonderful subject, you cannot do it by not being lost yourself.

You know there are moments such as these when time stands still...

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.

I think we conjure up and invent people, and then whoever happens to be there is the recipient of our imagination. A good deal of the attraction between people, I think, is based on the fact that one is able to absorb the creation

Bring the viewer to your side, include him in your thought. He is not a bystander. You have the power to increase his perceptions and conceptions.

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.

A camera teaches you how to see without a camera.

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion... the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate.

Seeing is more than a physiological phenomenon... We see not only with our eyes but with all that we are and all that our culture is. The artist is a professional see-er.

Life, for people, begins to crumble on the edges; they don't realize it.

A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.

While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.

One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind. To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.

The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.

It is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque.

Artists are controlled by the life that beats in them, like the ocean beats on the shore.

The people who are garrulous and wear their heart on their sleeve and tell you everything, that's one kind of person, but the fellow who's hiding behind a tree and hoping you don't see him is the fellow that you'd better find out why.

I believe that what we call beautiful is generally a by-product.

To know ahead of time what you're looking for means you're then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting, and often false.