Quotes About Photography

I have a dark room, and I still process film, but digital photography can be a totally lying kind of experience; you can move anything you want... the whole thing can't be trusted, really.

The most important thing I gave the Beatles was my friendship. They trusted me: there was no fear in being photographed.

Everyone with a cell phone thinks they're a photographer. Everyone with a laptop thinks they're a journalist. But they have no training, and they have no idea of what we keep to in terms of standards, as in what's far out and what's reality. And they have no dedication to truth.

The truth is, the difference between a studio photographer and a photojournalist is the same as the difference between a political cartoonist and an abstract painter; the only thing the two have in common is the blank page. The jobs entail different talents and different desires.

Theres no question that photographs communicate more instantly and powerfully than words do, but if you want to communicate a complex concept clearly, you need words, too.

I have no interest in being famous. I just want to make famous photographs.

The point of fashion is that you take the picture you want. And fashion is the only photography that allows fantasy, and I'm a fantasist.

Because I know war... because I know the horror, I don't want to add to it. .........After the war, we felt the need to celebrate life, and for me photography was the means to achieve this.

You're talking about meaning. I want to talk about the picture.

Lifes light. Life is light. You can make light do anything you want to. Photography means 'light writing'.

I've been chased through airports with a screaming baby because the photographers are ruthless, and they want the picture.

Always wait for the trigger. The trigger is the final part of the puzzle, the reason you want to shoot.

The way that I rationalize making photographs is because you're countering what's offensively mass-produced with something that you just want more people to see.

I fall in love with almost every person I photograph. I want to hear their stories. I want to get close. This is personal for me.

Richard Avedon taught me that if you go into a photo session and come out with what you had hoped for, it's a failure. You need to be surprised if you want it to be magical.

A sexy picture can come from anyone who forms an intimacy with their subject. You can take a sexy picture of your cat if you want to.

Why in the world would anyone want to photograph an old woman like me?

When you pose for a photograph, it's behind a smile that isn't yours. You are angry and hungry and alive. What I value in you is that intensity. I want to make portraits as intense as people.

The mirror is the tool of the one who wants to do a self-portrait. And if you want to make a photo you need a mirror.

There is no off position on my visual switch, and I don't want one. I love, and always have, telling stories with my camera.

Actors are hard to photograph because they never want to reveal who they are. You don't know if you're getting a character from a Chekhov play or a Polanski film. It depends what mood they're in.

As a model you have to convey something with one look - and actors will have a scene and they can sort of do it, but models have to convey what photographers want. It's a bit of an art.

The tools I learned photographing celebrities, now I want to use them to sell ideas.

Yes, there's a certain power to a photograph. The camera has a way of disorienting a person, if it wants to and, for me, when it disorients, it's got real value.