Quotes About Photography

A photograph is not necessarily a lie, but it isn't the truth either. It's more like a fleeting, subjective impression.

The photographic moment for Cartier-Bresson is an instant, a fraction of a second, and he stalks that instant as though it were a wild animal. The photographic moment for Strand is a biographical or historic moment, whose duration is ideally measured not by seconds but by its relation to a lifetime. Strand does not pursue an instant, but encourages a moment to arise as one might encourage a story to be told.

Every image embodies a way of seeing. Even a photograph. For photographs are not, as is often assumed, a mechanical record. Every time we look at a photograph, we are aware, however slightly, of the photographer selecting that sight from an infinity of other possible sights. This is true even in the most casual family snapshot. The photographer's way of seeing is reflected in his choice of subject.

The truth is that most photographs taken of people are about suffering, and most of that suffering is man-made.

By 1853 New York alone had 86 studios. The enormous demand for family pictures was due partly to the high nineteenth-century mortality rates, especially among children. "Secure the shadow ere the substance fade, Let Nature imitate what Nature made," ran the advertising slogan.

The camera would miss it all. A magnificent picture is never worth a thousand perfect words. Ansel Adams can be a great artist, but he can never be Shakespeare. His tools are too literal.

Life magazine ran a page featuring me and three other girls that was clearly the precursor of Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues

I get so confused about life photography art.

Pictures you have taken have an influence on those that you are going to make. That's life!

My iPhone has changed my life - I spend hours taking photos of the sidewalk as I walk down the street. I like the casualness, that it's low-resolution.

No, I wouldn't want the paparazzi ever following me in my life.

I don't jump in real life, why would I jump in a photo?

When you're shy, a camera becomes an entry into life. It was a kind of shield I could hide my shyness behind, and it allowed me to become an active observer rather than a passive one.

Truthfully, I don't really think of myself as a photographer. I don't have all the disciplines and knowledge of a person who's spent their life devoted to photography.

Most photographs are of life, what goes on in the world. And that's boring, generally. Life is banal, you know. Let's say that an artist deals with banality. I don't care what the discipline is.

The [35mm] camera is for life and for people, the swift and intense moments of life.

When that shutter clicks, anything else that can be done afterward is not worth consideration.

Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.

No photographer is as good as the simplest camera.

The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer's understanding of his subject and mastery of his process.

Anything more than 500 yds from the car just isn't photogenic.

Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.

My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.

Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it may be.