Quotes & Sayings About Being Photographed

I have never been sorry to see my sets being struck, provided they are well photographed. They're not works of art but part of making a film. — Ken Adam

I'm not a nice girl; I'm a photographer. (On being told by a Federal Art Project official, after she photographed the Bowery, that a nice girl should not go into such neighborhoods ) — Berenice Abbott

I had an early taste of fame. I was 20, going out with TV presenter Dani Behr and we'd have paparazzi chasing us. I'm not comfortable being photographed, though I accept it is part of the job. I had to ask myself, 'What comes first, being a celebrity or footballer?' — Ryan Giggs

I love being photographed, or I should say I love the art of photography. It's about people taking photographs of you, stealing them, and then presuming or assuming or captioning. Words can never be taken back, photographs can never be taken back, nothing can ever be taken back. — Madonna Ciccone

No man can hope to be elected in his state without being photographed eating a hot dog at Nathan's Famous. — Nelson Rockefeller

I opened the other envelope. It contained a photograph of a girl. The pose suggested a natural ease, or a lot of experience in being photographed. It showed darkish hair which might possibly have been red, a wide clear forehead, serious eyes, high cheekbones, nervous nostrils and a mouth which was not giving anything away. It was a fine-drawn, almost a taut face, and not a happy one — Raymond Chandler

After years and years of everybody commenting on the way I look and dress and being photographed, one starts to become self-conscious and starts to plan things more. You end up judging yourself more, what looks good and what doesn't. — Madonna Ciccone

When I was being photographed, I always felt very much in my own skin. That's probably one of the reasons why I enjoy being photographed. — Gloria Vanderbilt

Like most portrait photographers, I aim to record the instant the subject is not thinking about being photographed, striving to get beyond the practiced facial performance, reaching for something unplanned. While trying to be as objective as possible, I acknowledge that every gesture is still an act of artifice. — Martin Schoeller

It was really bizarre, that Sabzian business. You know I had no interest in being photographed before this incident. But then not just Sabzian - many other people started pretending they were me! One of them actually got married while pretending he was me! My face became publicly recognizable soon after I decided to have a few photographs of me available in public to prevent these sorts of identity thefts. It is really pathetic, if you think of it. Filmmakers and filmmaking is so popular in Iran because all other forms of expression have been denied to people. — Mohsen Makhmalbaf

It took me a long time to get comfortable with the idea of being photographed by a moving or still camera. — Cate Blanchett

The expression on my face - who on earth would be interested in that? All that I have to say is to be found in my works. (On being photographed) — Pierre Bonnard

And it would be a bit out of character. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan may have started out as a reformer, but he really enjoys being seen as a larger-than-life tough-guy figure. He doesn't go on photographed hunting expeditions, for instance. But he does have hero moments, such as when his convoy stopped in the middle of the Bosphorus Bridge and he allegedly talked down a jumper, prevented him from committing suicide. — Peter Kenyon

Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos. — Susan Sontag

What is the subject matter of this apparently very personal world? It has been suggested that these shapes and images are underworld characters, the inhabitants of the vast common realm of memories that have gone down below the level of conscious control. It may be they are. The degree of emotional involvement and the amount of free association with the material being photographed would point in that direction. — Aaron Siskind

All my life I've taken photographs of people who are completely at peace being what they were in the situations I photographed them in. — Jock Sturges

There is a photograph of zugibe and one of his volunteers in the aforementioned sindon article. zugibe is dressed in a knee-length white lab coat and is shown adjusting one of the vital sign leads affixed to the man's chest. the cross reaches almost to the ceiling, towering over zugibe and his bank of medical monitors. the volunteer is naked except for a pair of gym shorts and a hearty mustache. he wears the unconcerned, mildly zoned-out expression of a person waiting at a bus stop. neither man appears to have been self-conscious about being photographed this way. i think that when you get yourself down deep into a project like this, you lose sight of how odd you must appear to the rest of the world. — Mary Roach

Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation. A photograph is a result of the photographer's decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless. — John Berger

Every time I leave the house or we go anywhere, there is a paranoia. We always have to watch for specific cars and specific signs that we're being photographed. — Megan Fox

I do like some of the perks, like being, recognized, especially if I've had my makeup done and I'm going to be photographed and people admire me. Who wouldn't like that? — Jane Pauley

Believe me, I don't like being photographed. I don't like myself in pictures. Actually, I do sometimes. — Darius Khondji

You know, also I, you know, I was on those birth control pills and my breasts were like, they hurt ... and, you know, it was like they blew up like. You know, they wouldn't fit into any of my dresses. I had to quit taking those birth control pills ... This was like - I mean they were like, I thought they should be photographed really ... So they were, for immortality. (On being photographed nude playing chess with Marcel Duchamp at Duchamp's 1963 retrospective at the Pasadena Museum of Art.) — Eve Babitz

A complete autobiography would indeed be a picture of the outer and inner universe photographed upon one little life's consciousness. For does not the whole world, seen and unseen, go to the making up of every human being? — Lucy Larcom

[My early performance work] started by being the activity of a person, any person, like any other - but once that person became photographed it became a specialized person, the object of a personality cult. — Vito Acconci

I think where I've instinctively found myself is that I am somewhat guarded in my public life. Being interviewed or being photographed or just in public attention, I have a certain reserve. But when I'm working I feel like I'm very open. At least I like to believe that I feel like nothing is held back when I'm in front of a camera. That's my job. — Annette Bening

The portrait of a person is one of the most difficult things to do. It means you must almost bring the presence of that person photographed to other people in such a way that they don't have to know that person personally, but that they are still confronted with a human being that they won't forget. That's a portrait. — Paul Strand

Dogs don't mind being photographed in compromising situations. — Elliott Erwitt

When I was photographed, I didn't feel I was acting. I just felt I was being photographed. It sort of taught me things about myself that I didn't know and was trying to find out. — Gloria Vanderbilt

There are some women who are probably genuinely aroused by the idea of being photographed naked. But I think we can safely assume that many more women appear in Playboy for the simple reason that they are paid to. Which is fine. But 'because I was paid to' is not the same thing as 'I'm taking control of my sexuality. — Ariel Levy

Being a woman is just a marvelous plus in photographing. Men like to be photographed by women, it becomes flirtatious and fun, and women feel less as if they're expected to be in a relationship. — Eve Arnold

Over the years I have photographed thousands of people. I have never stopped being curious and trying to discover new worlds. I have used my camera as a mirror for my subjects as well. I remember photographing a woman in her 80s for my book, Wise Women, who told me it had been a long time since anyone had really been interested in "seeing" or photographing her. When she saw the picture, she burst into tears. She saw something in the photograph, an inner beauty and soul, she felt had long ago vanished. — Joyce Tenneson

The first time I worked with colors was by making these mosaics of Pantone swatches. They end up being very large pictures, and I photographed with a very large camera - an 8x10 camera. So you can see the surface of every single swatch - like in this picture of Chuck Close. And you have to walk very far to be able to see it. — Vik Muniz

Some actors don't mind it. Those who are pretty. They think it's nice to be looked at because they are nice to look at. I appreciate that. I'm very happy to salute that aspiration. But I don't like the way I look so I don't like being photographed. I become defensive. — Richard Griffiths

Has it ever happened, you've seen a striking film, beautifully written and acted and photographed, that you walk out of the theater glad to be a human being and you say to yourself I hope they make a lot of money from that? I hope the actors, I hope the director earns a million dollars for what they've done, what they've given me tonight? And you go back and see the movie again and you're happy to be a tiny part of the system that is rewarding those people with every ticket ... the actors I see on the screen, they'll get twenty cents of this very dollar I'm paying now; they'll be able to buy an ice cream cone any flavor they want from their share of my ticket alone. Glorious moments in art in books and films and dance, they're delicious because we see ourselves in glory's mirror. — Richard Bach

I hated being photographed and never wanted to go on red carpets, even though they always asked me to. My place was behind the scenes. I wasn't a diva. I preferred to look at life from the outside. — Giovanna Cau

It's a given your family will be tired of being photographed, but don't give up. In another couple of decades, those are the pictures you will be glad to have. — David Burnett

It's not the photographer who makes the picture, but the person being photographed. — Sebastiao Salgado

I imagine that the essential gesture of the Operator is to surprise something or someone (through the little hole in the camera), and that this gesture is therefore perfect when it is performed unbeknownst to the subject being photographed. From this gesture derive all photographs whose principle (or better whose alibi) is "shock"; for the photographic "shock" consists less in traumatizing than in revealing what was so well hidden that the actor himself was unaware or unconscious of it. — Roland Barthes

I love being photographed, I love the ramp. — Nafisa Joseph

Anton brings the camera. I'll bring a tuba, wear black, not shave, and take us to a burned-down Chinese restaurant. (On being photographed by his longtime photo collaborator Anton Corbijn) — Tom Waits

One of the risks of appearing in public is the likelihood of being photographed. — Diane Arbus

I used to always be putting my hat on children being photographed and then getting home and discovering I was riddled with lice. That used to happen very, very regularly. I used to get headlice all the time. — Tom Baker

I'm not comfortable being photographed, though I accept it is part of the job. — Ryan Giggs

You know, the Chinese don't like to be photographed because they believe that a part of their life is being taken away by the photographer. And in a way, they're right. The photographer is trying to get the prettiest moment of a life in his camera. — Bert Stern

I'd like to briefly state the accomplishment that we expect from a photographer. He must make the person being photographed forget that he has eaten from the tree of knowledge. — Albert Renger-Patzsch

The photographer discovers himself/herself being photographed and we can guess he is uncomfortable. Unsuccessfully he/she tries to recompose his posture and to look like a photographer taking photos. But no, he is and continues to be a spectator. The momentous fact of being photographed leads him to becoming an actor. And, as always, actors must assume a role, which is only an elegant way of avoiding to say they must choose sides, choose a faction, take an option. — Subcomandante Marcos

What self-respecting male wanted a job being photographed? — Jude Deveraux

Any photographed human being is always a photograph. — Luigi Ghirri

I was extremely irritated being photographed for a long time, then I gave up caring. Photography is a nauseating cliche, but there is a lot to it. You can tell so much about a person from it. You are exaggerating the consciousness. It's life-thickening, photography. — Peter Beard

A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed. — Ansel Adams

A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he's wearing or how he looks. — Richard Avedon

Being photographed was dead time for the soul. Can the head think, while it does the same half smile under the same light frown? If this was all true, then Richard's soul was in great shape. No one photographed him any more, not even his wife. When the photographs came back from an increasingly infrequent holiday. Richard was never there..an elbow or earlobe on the edge of the frame, on the edge of life and love.. — Martin Amis

All I do is give interviews and spend time being photographed. — Doris Lessing

I'm nearly 50. I'm past being photographed falling out of bars. — K.d. Lang

It's true to say that I'm a budding young actor. But I'd rather get my name out there because of my acting rather than who I'm being photographed with. — Josh Bowman

There is something wrong about being photographed that has nothing to do with vanity. — Nigella Lawson

The photographer is a thief who chooses what he steals (which, at this stage of the crisis, is a luxury) and does not democratize the image, that is to say, the photographer selects the pictures, a privilege which ought to be granted to the person being photographed. — Subcomandante Marcos

Always point your finger at the chest of the person with whom you are being photographed. You will appear dynamic. And no photo editor can crop you from the picture. — Ken Auletta

I believe I'm not in the press, just in terms of being photographed and paparazzi all the time, or looking for that sensationalistic type of side or anything like that, so I keep things very quiet. — Dwayne Johnson

He wanted head and hands and arms on a pillow - in many different positions. I was asked to move my hands in many different ways - also my head - and I had to turn this way and that. There were nudes that might have been of several different people - sitting - standing - even standing upon the radiator against the window - that was difficult - radiators don't intend you to stand on top of them. (On being photographed by Alfred Stieglitz) — Georgia O'Keeffe

For me it is clear that photography prizes should be for those being photographed and not for the photographers. — Subcomandante Marcos

The way someone who's being photographed presents himself to the camera, and the effect of the photographer's response on that presence, is what the making of a portrait is all about. — Richard Avedon

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

I never liked being photographed. I just happened to be good at it, — Jean Shrimpton

A man with a camera was always suspected of being a spy. Moreover, the Jews did not want to be photographed, due to a misunderstanding of the prohibition against making graven images (photography had not been invented when the Torah was written!). I was forced to use a hidden camera ... — Roman Vishniac

I'm being photographed, worrying about my hair - and yet here I am, I've directed a feature film, why do I care about the way I look? Who cares? Does Tim Burton care? Does Joel Coen? — Nicole Holofcener

If you photograph for a long time, you get to understand such things as body language. I often do not look at people I photograph, especially afterwards. Also when I want a photo, I become somewhat fearless, and this helps a lot. There will always be someone who objects to being photographed, and when this happens you move on. — Martin Parr

When you are 18, 19, 20, you're used to being photographed all the time, in a certain way. So, the narcissism becomes almost out of control. And the way that young women are photographed, they become addicted to this feedback of the image. — Marianne Faithfull

MY LADY, WE ARE BEING HUNTED

possibility we are poisoned, possibility
there is no meat on the table, not even bait
in the trap. possibility they've already bought our parents.
possibility we'll run out of water; the salt marsh
is rising; we are followed; they've clocked our meeting
possibility this is an ambush
possibility they are downwind of us,
they've photographed the house, tattooed the children
possibility they've marked the bread with hexes
possibility the moon is theirs & netted
possibility the web of idea is upon us.
possibility we've lost this particular rumble.

who stole the sword we bedded; followed the fork
in the road where we left no footprints
who swallowed yr amber, lady, while we slept

possibility we can hide here indefinitely
possibility that we should cut & run — Diane Di Prima

Sometimes when I'm being photographed, I hear the voice of this photographer who told me when I was about six while he was taking my school photo that I didn't have a nice smile, and I shouldn't smile in photos. — Brad Goreski