Photography quotes

1. A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words. Ansel Adams

2. Keep it simple. Alfred Eisenstaedt

3. Sometimes the simplest picture are the hardest to get. Neil Leifer

4. I have a very good memory, but it's short. Thank god for photography. John E. Burkowski

5. Color records the image, but black and white captures the feelings that lie beneath the surface. Cole Thompson

6. Pictures are wasted unless the motive power which impelled you to action is strong and stirring. Berenice Abbott

7. Photography is internal vision. You can only see outside in proportion to your inward consciousness. William Giles

8. Choice or freedom of choice is just an existential concern. But for photographers, it's a lifetime's preoccupation Marc Riboud

9. The best motivation for a visual person is the simple act of looking around. Felipe Doupouy

10. A picture should be looked at - not talked about. Elliott Erwitt

11. Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the 'ah-ha'. Ernst Haas

12. To photograph is to appropriate the thing being photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation with the world that feels like knowledge - and, therefore, like power. Susan Sontag

13. Let the subject generate its own photographs. Become a camera. Minor White

14. Of course it's all luck. Henri Cartier-Bresson

15. A photograph and its "referent" have so many affinities that we are unable to separate them from each other, but also enough differences to keep us from conflating them. Kaja Silverman

16. Photography concentrates one’s eye on the superficial. For that reason it obscures the hidden life which glimmers through the outlines of things like a play of light and shade. One can’t catch that even with the sharpest lens. One has to grope for it by feeling. Franz Kafka

17. A photograph isn't a representation or even an index. It is, rather, a special kind of analogy - the kind that our culture most needs. Kaja Silverman

18. The photograph should be more interesting or more beautiful than what was photographed. Garry Winogrand

19. A photograph is always invisible, it is not it that we see. Roland Barthes

20. I think nearly every artist continually wants to reach the edge of nothingness - the point where you can't go any further. Harry Callahan

21. Photography has increased my awareness. Andreas Carl

22. The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own. Susan Sontag

23. The illiterate of the future will be ignorant of the camera and pen alike. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1936)

24. A film is never really good unless the camera is an eye in the head of a poet. Orson Welles

25. A good photograph is knowing where to stand. Ansel Adams

26. When I use the camera, I often feel like I know part of the people or places I come in contact with. Christophe Agou

27. Our job is to record, each in his own way, this world of light and shadow and time that will never come again exactly as it is today. Anonymous

28. I have never taken a picture for any other reason than that at that moment it made me happy to do so. Jacques-Henri Lartigue

29. A photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how the camera "saw" a piece of time and space. Garry Winogrand

30. In my view you cannot claim to have seen something until you have photographed it. Emile Zola

31. Writing is not about words. Painting is not about pigment. Music is not about tones. As long as photographers insist that photography is about photographs, the art is limited and self-containing! Brooks Jensen

32. The artists must see all things as if he were seeing them for the first time. All his life he must see as he did when he was a child Henri Matisse

33. Having a camera makes you no more a photographer than having a hammer and some nails makes you a carpenter. Claude Adams

34. The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt. Henri Cartier-Bressson

35. What uses having a great depth of field, if there is not an adequate depth of feeling? W. Eugene Smith

36. A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense, and is, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety Ansel Adams

37. If you can see, you can also take pictures. But learning to see may take a long time. Anonymous

38. Let's have variety. Photographers can't, don't and shouldn't all see and work alike, and that is good. David Vestal

39. To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place.... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them. Elliott Erwitt

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

41. I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed. Garry Winogrand

42. I always thought good photos were like good jokes. If you have to explain it, it just isn't that good. Anonymous

43. 36 satisfactory exposures on a roll means a photographer is not trying anything new. Freeman Patterson

44. The picture is good or not from the moment it was caught in the camera. Henri Cartier-Bresson

45. A photo no longer tells the truth. It suggests just one possibility. Anonymous

46. When the shutter closes the world opens! Sharon Wax

47. I think all art is about control - the encounter between control and the uncontrollable. Richard Avedon

48. My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it. Sam Abell

49. The camera always points both ways. In expressing your subject, you also express yourself. Freeman Patterson

50. If I knew how to take good photographs I would do it every time. Robert Doisneau

51. Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like. David Alan Harvey

52. A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it? Ernst Haas

53. The camera doesn't make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But, you have to SEE. Ernst Haas

54. There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are. Ernst Haas

55. You don't take a photograph, you make it Ansel Adams