Quotes & Sayings About Photography

Photography seems to fix, but this is an illusion created by our short lives. A photograph is merely a note held for 200 years. — Douglas McCulloh

Only Certain offered no enticements, for she knew nothing could ease the pain. Not books or photography or food. Not even love. — Billie Letts

Photography repeats itself unconsciously and unavoidably, producing stereotypes that then are repeated ad infinitum. — Andy Grundberg

Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution. — Ansel Adams

I believe that the essence of photography is black and white. Color is but a deviance. — Sarah Moon

Photographs are perhaps the most mysterious of all the objects that make up, and thicken, the environment we recognize as modern. Photographs really are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood. — Susan Sontag

A photograph is usually looked at- seldom looked into. — Ansel Adams

When you think of fashion photography, it's a dream. It's like we all want to be those women. We want to wear those dresses. — Stella McCartney

Photography is about being exquisitely present. — Joel Meyerowitz

I would exchange every painting of Christ for one snapshot. — George Bernard Shaw

Photography is a Passion Not a Hobby! — Ilyass Azaryouh

The world makes up my pictures, not me. — Lee Friedlander

I suffered first as a child from discrimination, poverty ... So I think it was a natural follow from that that I should use my camera to speak for people who are unable to speak for themselves. — Gordon Parks

What I like best about underwater photography is giving a visual voice to the invisible. What I like least is the prospect of drowning. — David Doubilet

The reason I often say, for me, photography is analogous to poetry, for my kind of work more so than journalism, is because it's so open to interpretation. And I'm very happy having different interpretations of it. — Alec Soth

I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse. — Diane Arbus

For photography to be an art involves reformulating notions of art, rejecting both material and formal purism and also the separation of art from commerce as distinct semiotic practices that never interlock. — Peter Wollen

When the reality looks magnificent, a real art of photography has only one choice: To capture this beauty magnificently! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I often think of my work as visual haiku. It is an attempt to evoke and suggest through as few elements as possible rather than to describe with tremendous detail. — Michael Kenna

Photography is a generous medium ... — Lee Friedlander

I'm always worried about the sitter - are they cold, are they hot, are they comfortable? Photography today is so accurate and so good that it's really so much easier just to take photographs and work from them. — Paul Emsley

Photography ... has lived under the tyranny of its subject matter: the object has exercised an almost total domination. — Joan Fontcuberta

Actually, when I first started dabbling in photography, I was still working for my parents as a salesman. — Herb Ritts

The aesthetic discussion of photography is dominated by the concept of time. Photographs appear as devices stopping time and preserving fragments of the past, like flies in amber. — Peter Wollen

What's so incredibly amusing with photography is that while seemingly an art of the surface, it catches things I haven't even noticed. And it pains me not to have seen things in all their depth. — Jacques-Henri Lartigue

I've been the head of the photography program at Bard College for over 30 years, and I take that as seriously as I do my photography. My time is devoted to that too. — Stephen Shore

And I don't like having my picture taken. I'm almost like an old African in that sense. I think it steals a bit of the soul. — Eric Clapton

Abstraction in photography is ridiculous, and is only an imitation of painting. We stopped imitating painters a hundred years ago, so to imitate them in this day and age is laughable. — Berenice Abbott

The painters have no copyright on modern art! ... I believe in, and make no apologies for, photography: it is the most important graphic medium of our day. It does not have to be, indeed cannot be - compared to painting - it has different means and aims. — Edward Weston

The painter ... will find [photography] a rapid way of making collections of studies he could otherwise obtain only with much time and trouble and, whatever his talents might be, in a far less perfect manner. — Paul Delaroche

Everything around us, dead or alive, in the eyes of a crazy photographer mysteriously takes on many variations, so that a seemingly dead object comes to life through light or by its surroundings ... To capture some of this - I suppose that's lyricism. — Josef Sudek

I used to do a lot of casual photography - back in the olden times when one used film - but it had fallen by the wayside over the years. — Kara Swisher

Photography does not form a separate, barren field of art. It is only a means of execution, uniform, rapid and sure, which serves the artist by reproducing with mathematical precision the form and effect of objects and even that poetry which at once arises from any harmonious combination. — Charles Negre

French Kiss - A Love Letter to Paris, is a tribute to many of the wonderful moments of romance, beauty, hope, and love that I have witnessed and been inspired by in Paris, my adopted home, over the past 40 years. I believe that photography is ultimately about sharing. I am excited to share, with the world, these moments of the heart that have touched my own, in this most beautiful city, Paris — Peter Turnley

Photography is inherently an analytic discipline. Where a painter starts with a blank canvas and builds a picture, a photographer starts with the messiness of the world and selects a picture. A photographer standing before houses and streets and people and trees and artifacts of a culture imposes an order on the scene - simplifies the jumble by giving it structure. He or she imposes this order by choosing a vantage point, choosing a frame, choosing a moment of exposure, and by selecting a plane of focus. — Stephen Shore

Museum collections have given photography rigor, and mortis. — Bill Jay

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

There is an aggression implicit in every use of the camera. — Susan Sontag

There is not a big difference between life and taking pictures ... You're in the middle of life, you're living, making love, eating, sleeping - and photography is part of it. And I don't say this because I'm being romantic. I say this because that's just the way it happens to be. — Anders Petersen

See, a painting is much cheaper than making a film. And photography is, you know, way cheap. So if I get an idea for a film, there are many ways to get it together and go realise that film. There's really nothing to be afraid of. — David Lynch

It's almost too perfect - the poster girl for an illness in the early days of photography sees the world in black and white. — Siri Hustvedt

Black-and-white photography, which I was doing in the very early days, was essentially called art photography and usually consisted of landscapes by people like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. But photographs by people like Adams didn't interest me. — William Eggleston

My photos are my diary. Every photo is no more than the representation of a single day. And each day contains the past and the projection into the future. That's why I feel compelled to indicate the date on every picture I take. — Nobuyoshi Araki

We are in a privileged and sometimes happy position. We see a great deal of the world. Our obligation is to pass it on to others. — Margaret Bourke-White

Photography is solitary and there are lags between seeing with your eyes and seeing through the lens, and then seeing the image on your computer ... I often see things after the fact. This revelatory quality includes a sense of playfulness, because you're not sure what the consequences are going to be. — Christian Marclay

I could ramble on forever, I just love photography. It's my passion, it drives my family crazy. I live it and breathe it. — Russell James

Everything looks worse in black and white. — Paul Simon

If we examine a work of ordinary art, by means of a powerful microscope, all traces of resemblance to nature will disappear - but the closest scrutiny of the photogenic drawing discloses only a more absolute truth, a more perfect identity of aspect with the thing represented. — Edgar Allan Poe

Sometimes I arrive just when God's ready to have somone click the shutter. — Ansel Adams

Now, my knowledge of photography was terribly limited. — Ben Shahn

I have always felt that a lot of the most interesting work, not just mine but other people's, falls into [the] nether area, somewhere between the worlds of documentary and photojournalism (two very vague words) and the world of art. I think a lot of street photography falls into this nether area. — Alex Webb

Photography in our time leaves us with a grave responsibility. While we are playing in our studios with broken flowerpots, oranges, nude studies and still lifes, one day we know that we will be brought to account: life is passing before our eyes without our ever having seen a thing. — Brassai

Photography is more about money now but then so are most things. — David Bailey

In the business of portrait photography, one must combine the artist and the craftsman. — Louis Fabian Bachrach Jr.

In a world and a life that moves so fast, photography just makes the sound go out and it makes you stop and take a pause. Photography calms me. — Drew Barrymore

Do not settle for easy. Do not settle for that first image. Craft it, work it, and make something more out of it. And finally, don't forget that the biggest joy in photography is making pictures of those things in your own life. — David Burnett

I'm so drawn to photography because you can convey a complex story in a single frame. — Gia Coppola

Photography, too, reduces the world to strips and rectangles; photographers scrutinize the surfaces of reality in hope of unlocking the potential for significance that is latent within them. — Frank Gohlke

In previous ages the word 'art' was used to cover all forms of human skill. The Greeks believed that these skills were given by the gods to man for the purpose of improving the condition of life. In a real sense, photography has fulfilled the Greek ideal of art; it should not only improve the photographer, but also improve the world. — David Hurn

To me, the work I do is a means of interpreting unsettling truths, of bearing witness, and of sounding an alarm. The beauty of formal representation both carries an affirmation of life and subversively brings us face to face with news from our besieged world. — Richard Misrach

Becoming a professional artist takes talent and perseverance, even more so when the field is photography. — Clyde Butcher

I like to think that the music is a mixture of personal experiences mixed with photography and movies. — Sune Rose Wagner

I was making photographs of the world long before I was a photographer. — Marcey Jacobson

Probably one of the worst things that happened to photography is that cameras have viewfinders. — John Baldessari

T.V. has made going to the theatre seem pointless, photography has pretty much killed painting but graffiti has remained gloriously unspoilt by progress. — Banksy

Photography's a case of keeping all the pores of the skin open, as well as the eyes. A lot of photographers today think that by putting on the uniform, the fishing vest, and all the Nikons, that that makes them a photographer. But it doesn't. It's not just seeing. It's feeling. — Don McCullin

I always said it kept me alive - photography - because it did. It was my catharsis. — Bruce Gilden

If only I had thought of a Kodak! I could have flashed that glimpse of the Under-world in a second, and examined it at leisure. — H.G.Wells

As a matter of fact, nearly all the greatest work is being, and has always been done, by those who are following photography for the love of it, and not merely for financial reasons. As the name implies, an amateur is one who works for love. — Alfred Stieglitz

We are one human race, and there must be understanding among all men. For those who look at the problems of today, my big hope is that they understand. That they understand that the population is quite big enough, that they must be informed that they must have economic development, that they must have social development, and must be integrated into all parts of the world. — Sebastiao Salgado

Photography is humbling, it really is, and it really allows for me to atone for some of the missteps I've made throughout the course of my life. — Jamel Shabazz

The act of making a photograph is less a question of what is being looked at than how. — Margaret Atwood

Photography is a transformation, not a reproduction. — Ernst Haas

Starting a new chapter is much like composing the perfect photograph. You must ensure the proper components are there. You may throw out the extra, but with out the key elements the story goes untold. — Faith Tilley Johnson

Before the invention of photography, significant moments in the flow of our lives would be like rocks placed in a stream: impediments that demonstrated but didn't diminish the volume of the flow and around which accrued the debris of memory, rich in sight, smell, taste, and sound. No snapshot can do what the attractive mnemonic impediment can: when we outsource that work to the camera, our ability to remember is diminished and what memories we have are impoverished. — Sally Mann

Photographing a culture in the here and now often means photographing the intersection of the present with the past. — David DuChemin

No, I don't work here, I'm taking pictures of messy bathrooms for a photo essay on the American West. But I'm always up for clean, so if you want to pitch in, I've got Pine Sol and a sponge in my car ... It's that VW microbus parked next to the dumpster, and you don't need a key, just pull hard. — Pansy Schneider-Horst

I read like a crazy person, I play the piano, and I'm a photographer. I always say my photography keeps me sane. I spend a lot of time in the darkroom. It's a very solitary, quiet life when I'm not working. — Alaina Huffman

The photographer's problem is to see clearly the limitations and at the same time the potential qualities of his medium, for it is precisely here that honesty no less than intensity of vision is the pre-requisite of a living expression. The fullest realization of this is accomplished without tricks of process or manipulation, through the use of straight photographic methods. — Paul Strand

One thing that struck me early is that you don't put into a photograph what's going to come out. Or, vice versa, what comes out is not what you put in. — Diane Arbus

Advice to artists: always take the opportunity to shut up. — Bill Jay

Every day is a writing day. I get to my desk between 8 and 8:30 in the morning and then work through until 6pm, and then normally I'll take up whatever will be happening in the evening, usually painting or photography.
I do about four drafts total. I do handwritten drafts because I don't type and I have no wish to type. I mean, I know how to type, but I have no interest in putting the words down that way.
Maybe that's because I'm an artist and because I've always used a pen and so there's a sort of natural feel to it.
I don't know how familiar you are with Blake's illuminated texts, but you know very often he'll literally make words flower. It's really this glorious thing in bringing words and pictures into the same place, the same space. — Clive Barker

The main thing is to study pictures and stop listening to the pontifictaions of photographers. Photographers aren't oracles of wisdom. If they're good photographers, then take a good look at their pictures - what else do you need? — Elliott Erwitt

Photographs are believed more than words; thus they can be used persuasively to show people who have never taken the trouble to look what is there. — Eliot Porter

She believed photography to be the greatest of all art forms because it was simultaneously junk food and gourmet cuisine, because you could snap dozens of pictures in a couple of hours, then spend dozens of hours perfecting just a couple of them. — Tommy Wallach

The only advantage of the CD is that you have a booklet that can tell a bit of a story, but the little covers are just boring. I love vinyl, and I have loads of it. It's the same thing as digital photography versus film photography. It's a quality thing. — Anton Corbijn

Once a photographer is convinced that the camera can lie and that, strictly speaking, the vast majority of photographs are camera lies, inasmuch as they tell only part of a story or tell it in distorted form, half the battle is won. Once he has conceded that photography is not a naturalistic medium of rendition and that striving for naturalism in a photograph is futile, he can turn his attention to using a camera to make more effective pictures. — Andreas Feininger

The fact is that the camera is literal if anything, which gives it something in common with a thermometer ... Often the tension that exists between the pictorial content of a photograph and its record of reality is the picture's true beauty. There is sleight of hand in photography ... you make the viewer think he's seeing everything while at the same time you make him realize he's not. I try to make my pictures seem reasonable and then, at the last minute, pull the rug from beneath the viewer's feet, very gently so there's a little thrill. — John Loengard

Photography is the power of observation, not the application of technology. — Ken Rockwell

Photographs trade simultaneously on the prestige of art and the magic of the real. — Susan Sontag

Since photography gives us every guarantee of exactitude that we could desire (they really believe that, the mad fools !), then photography and art are the same thing. — Charles Baudelaire

True photographs tend to remain on the streets, the story almost about to enter the edge of the frame of the snapshot or the shutter closing a moment too late, the story having just abandoned the frame. — Doug Rice

Looking and seeing are two different things. What matters is the relationship with the subject. — Christophe Agou

Essentially what photography is is life lit up. — Sam Abell

I feel, having the choices I had, I felt I had more control over my own medium than I did over photography. — Ben Shahn

Some photographers could vomit on a piece of paper and call it art, you know ... Hang it in the Guggenheim, or whatever. Sell a print for two hundred pounds? But I can't do that. I just
Maybe I have too much respect for walls ... or something. — Pansy Schneider-Horst

As industrialization provided social uses for the operations of the photographer, so the reaction against these uses reinforced the self-consciousness of photography-as-art. — Susan Sontag

I don't see how a woman in documentary photography could have children. I think it's a very difficult thing to do to raise a family, and I have enormous respect for people who do it. I'd hate to do something like that and not be good at it. — Mary Ellen Mark

To collect photographs is to collect the world. — Susan Sontag

I want a History of Looking. For the Photograph is the advent of myself as other: a cunning dissociation of consciousness from identity. Even odder: it was before Photography that men had the most to say about the vision of the double. Heautoscopy was compared with an hallucinosis; for centuries this was a great mythic theme. — Roland Barthes