Harry Callahan Quotes & Sayings

I guess I've shot about 40,000 negatives and of these I have about 800 pictures I like. — Harry Callahan

I love art because it doesn't have rules like baseball. The only rule is to be good. That's the toughest thing to do. — Harry Callahan

The photographs that excite me are photographs that say something in a new manner; not for the sake of being different but ones that are different because the individual is different and the individual expresses himself. — Harry Callahan

I can't say what makes a picture. I can't say. It's mysterious. — Harry Callahan

I just don't know what makes a picture, really - the thing that makes it is something unique, as far as I can understand. Just like one guy can write a sentence and it's beautiful and another one can write it and it's dead. What the difference is, I don't know. — Harry Callahan

I think I came alive when I started photography. — Harry Callahan

Only the journey matters. — Harry Callahan

I wish more people felt that photography was an adventure the same as life itself and felt that their individual feelings were worth expressing. To me, that makes photography more exciting. — Harry Callahan

The mystery isn't in the technique, it's in each of us. — Harry Callahan

In terms of art, the only real answer that I know of is to do it. If you don't do it, you don't know what might happen. — Harry Callahan

I realize that we all do express ourselves, but those who express that which is always being done are those whose thinking is almost in every way in accord with everyone else. Expression on this basis has become dull to those who wish to think for themselves. — Harry Callahan

It's a question of methods. Everybody wants results, but nobody wants to do what they have to do to get them done. — Harry Callahan

It takes me a long time to change. I don't think you can just go out and figure out a bunch of visual ideas and photograph. The change happens in living and not through thinking. — Harry Callahan

Every time I talked about making a picture I didn't do it. I had already done it - talking about it! I quit talking. — Harry Callahan

A man has to know his limitations. — Harry Callahan

My project could be only to photograph as I felt and desired, to regulate a pleasant form of living, to get up in the morning-free, to feel the trees, the grass, the water, sky or buildings, people-everything that affects us; and to photograph that which I saw and have always felt. — Harry Callahan

To be a photographer, one must photograph. No amount of book learning, no checklist of seminars attended, can substitute for the simple act of making pictures. — Harry Callahan

I like the simple things. I don't know why. I'm that way. I came from a simple place. — Harry Callahan

I can tell you for me it goes on forever. There are some things you can't ever find out. You can't find out in one life either. — Harry Callahan

Experience is the best teacher of all. And for that, there are no guarantees that one will become an artist. Only the journey matters. — Harry Callahan

A picture is like a prayer. — Harry Callahan

Nothing wrong with people getting shot, as long as it's the right people getting shot. — Harry Callahan

A picture is like a prayer; you're offering a prayer to get something, and in a sense it's like a gift of God because you have practically no control-at least I don't. — Harry Callahan

If you choose your subject selectively - intuitively - the camera can write poetry. — Harry Callahan

Photography is an adventure just as life is an adventure. If man wishes to express himself photographically, he must understand, surely to a certain extent, his relationship to life. — Harry Callahan

Opinions are like assholes, everbody's got one. — Harry Callahan

It's the subject matter that counts. I'm interested in revealing the subject in a new way to intensify it. A photo is able to capture a moment that people can't always see. — Harry Callahan

You only do exercises in art school. That's not the real thing. A little bit tells you so much. You have to find your own self. And you don't know what you are! But that's what you have to search for. — Harry Callahan

I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people. — Harry Callahan

A man's got to know his limitations. — Harry Callahan

You're a legend in your own mind. — Harry Callahan

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