Quotes About Photography

The photos I took in Afghanistan are lying in front of me. I peer into the faces of those who were with me there and who are so far away from me now, into the faces of those who were dying right next to me and those who were hiding behind my back. I can make these photos larger or smaller, darker or lighter. But what I can't do is bring back those who are gone forever.

When I came home, I was asked to put my pictures in a photo exhibit at the Cinematography College ... my pictures won first prize. I began to ask myself what I was doing, and why. A few months after the exhibit, I dropped out of college, left my wife and began to write this book.

Photography has a natural affinity for the strategies of surrealism - the exaltation of chance and eros, the exploration of obsession and the release of the unconscious.

They almost ran me off the road several times. There are so many chances that they take to get the right photo.

Poetic and speculative photographs can result if one works carefully and accurately, yet letting chance relationships have full play.

Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.

For me, pictures provide a means of holding, intensely, a moment of communication between one human and another.

The ultimate role of photography as a contemporary language of visual communication consists of its capacity to slow down our fast and chaotic way of reading images.

[The photographs] were there simply to indicate a radical art that had already vanished. The photograph was necessary only as a residue for communication.

I have tried to bring about better communication between people. I believe that humanitarian photography is like economics. Economy is a kind of sociology, as is documentary photography.

Photography is the most direct communication in non-violent contacts.

Photography, like any other art, is a form of communication. The artist is not blowing bubbles for his own gratification, but is speaking a language, is telling somebody something.

Photography has escalated almost exponentially! It is a language which covers almost every aspect of communication; factual and expressive.

Ive never really been anywhere, and now I get to go everywhere. I just have to make sure theres enough memory on my computer to hold all my pictures.

That's the way I learned photography: You make your picture in the camera. Now, so much is made in the computer. ... I'm not anti-digital, I just think, for me, film works better.

Sometimes it's not how much light you use to get an effect, it's how little you use and still make it work. There are a lot of rules to be broken in photography, and you've got to have courage.

I believe photography is about choosing to live, being brave. Looking is an act of courage. It's terrifying. It's possible to see too much, to witness things that we cannot hold.

My dad would always say, "When you look at a photo do you see yourself last?"

Q: Do you really distance yourself from your subject? I mean, what would you do if you were presented with a young girl burning to death? A: About 1/60 at f5.6.

The camera itself, the photograph itself, calls up death.

A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.

I have been photographed to death.

His camera at home was just too crummy. That's why all his pictures came out too dark or too light, and everyone in them had glowing red dots in their eyes. Greg wondered if this camera was any good.

I had a camera. My parents had given me a really good camera last Christmas.