Arnold Newman Quotes & Sayings

Photography is 1% talent and 99% moving furniture. — Arnold Newman

We don't take pictures with cameras, we take them with our hearts and minds. — Arnold Newman

Visual ideas combined with technology combined with personal interpretation equals photography. Each must hold it's own; if it doesn't, the thing collapses. — Arnold Newman

The camera is a mirror with a memory, but it cannot think. — Arnold Newman

Influences come from everywhere but when you are actually shooting you work primarily by instinct. But what is instinct? It is a lifetime accumulation of influence: experience, knowledge, seeing and hearing. There is little time for reflection in taking a photograph. All your experiences come to a peak and you work on two levels: conscious and unconscious. — Arnold Newman

We don't take photographs with our cameras, we take them with our hearts and our minds. They are a reflection of ourselves ... wha t we are and what we think. — Arnold Newman

We do not make photographs with our cameras. We make them with our minds, with our hearts, with our ideas. — Arnold Newman

Photography, as we all know, is not real at all. It is an illusion of reality with which we create our own private world. — Arnold Newman

There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and would come out with a masterpiece. We know that's impossible. You have to compose by the seat of your pants. — Arnold Newman

I often wonder whether I would have done as well in painting. — Arnold Newman

It seems to me that no one picture can ever be a final summation of a personality. There are so many facets in every human being that it is impossible to present them all in one photograph. — Arnold Newman

I didn't set out to do something different so much as do something that interested me. I wasn't trying to be avant-garde - that's being fashionable. You don't set out to revolutionize art, you make statements for yourself. — Arnold Newman

I am convinced that any photographic attempt to show the complete man is nonsense. We can only show, as best we can, what the outer man reveals. The inner man is seldom revealed to anyone, sometimes not even the man himself. — Arnold Newman

The subject must be thought of in terms of the 20th century, of houses he lives in and places he works, in terms of the kind of light the windows in these places let through and by which we see him every day. — Arnold Newman

I don't care what you do with that negative, you can retouch it, you can spit on it, you can grind it underfoot. The only thing that matters is if it is honest. If [the picture] is honest, you and everybody can tell. If it is dishonest, you and everybody can tell. — Arnold Newman

Those who call themselves art photographers are pompous, arrogant egoists. — Arnold Newman

A lot of photographers think that if they buy a better camera they'll be able to take better photographs. A better camera won't do a thing for you if you don't have anything in your head or in your heart. — Arnold Newman