Quotes and Sayings about Photography
"Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death."
- Berenice Abbott
(Related: Death, Life, Positive, Act, Living, Photography, Song, Word)
"Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past."
- Berenice Abbott
(Related: Past, Photography, Present)
"Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself."
- Berenice Abbott
(Related: Photography)
"As I have practiced it, photography produces pleasure by simplicity. I see something special and show it to the camera. A picture is produced. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs."
- Sam Abell
(Related: Photography, Pleasure, Simplicity)
"Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay."
- Sam Abell
(Related: Desire, Photography)
"Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment."
- Ansel Adams
(Related: Disappointment, Photography)
"It is my intention to present - through the medium of photography - intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators."
- Ansel Adams
(Related: Intention, May, Meaning, Photography, Present, World)
"Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution."
- Ansel Adams
(Related: Perception, Execution, Expression, Infinite, Photography, Variety)
"Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art."
- Ansel Adams
(Related: Art, Ideas, Communication, Photography)
"Videos are more like photography. It's not as much about trying to tell a story as it is creating images."
- Tatyana Ali
(Related: Photography, Trying)
"In my photography, color and composition are inseparable. I see in color."
- William Albert Allard
(Related: Photography)
"I threw myself into this artform because photography had given me a new sense of mission and identity."
- Bob Anderson
(Related: Identity, Mission, Photography, Sense)
"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
(Related: Thought, Favorite, First, Photography)
"It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary."
- David Bailey
(Related: Imagination, Photography)
"A lot of people want to make films and do photography and things, but I'm quite happy doing what I'm doing."
- Syd Barrett
(Related: People, Photography, Want)
"Photography does not create eternity, as art does; it embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption."
- Andre Bazin
(Related: Art, Time, Corruption, Eternity, Photography)
"When I was teaching at Harvard in the 1970s, I went to Project Incorporated in Cambridge and took photography classes. I didn't even know how to aim the camera in those days."
- Ann Beattie
(Related: Photography, Project, Teaching)
"Most things in life are moments of pleasure and a lifetime of embarrassment; photography is a moment of embarrassment and a lifetime of pleasure."
- Tony Benn
(Related: Life, Embarrassment, Moments, Photography, Pleasure)
"What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time."
- John Berger
(Related: Time, Invention, Light, Photography)
"Photography is still a very new medium and everything must be tried and dare."
- Bill Brandt
(Related: Photography)
"I just love the world of photography."
- Brooke Burke
(Related: Love, Photography, World)
"I treat the photograph as a work of great complexity in which you can find drama. Add to that a careful composition of landscapes, live photography, the right music and interviews with people, and it becomes a style."
- Ken Burns
(Related: Music, Work, People, Complexity, Drama, Photography, Right, Style)
"You know, my parents have always been incredibly supportive. I'm an only child, so we're very close. There's just the three of us. They're exceptional parents but also great friends. My father was able to take his hobby, photography, and turn it into a beautiful career. So when they saw how much I loved acting, they were 100 percent behind me."
- Sophia Bush
(Related: Father, Acting, Career, Friends, Parents, Photography)
"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
(Related: Life, People, Feelings, Adventure, Photography, Worth)
"Actually, I'm not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I'm not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren't cooks."
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
(Related: Photography)
"In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little, human detail can become a Leitmotiv."
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
(Related: Detail, Photography)
"To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event."
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
(Related: Photography)
"Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation."
- Henri Cartier-Bresson
(Related: Meditation, Photography)
"I am very much aware of the visual side of things. I do a lot of photography. I often take Polaroids of things that strike me as visually interesting, just to remember them and perhaps use later."
- Helena Christensen
(Related: Photography)
"I don't think there's any such thing as teaching people photography, other than influencing them a little. People have to be their own learners. They have to have a certain talent."
- Imogen Cunningham
(Related: Talent, People, Photography, Teaching)
"All I really wanted to do was wildlife photography."
- Nigel Dennis
(Related: Photography, Wildlife)
"Big game photography in Africa is mainly done from a vehicle, so then I feel I might as well take the lot."
- Nigel Dennis
(Related: Photography)
"Photography started as a means of getting reference material for my paintings of nature subjects."
- Nigel Dennis
(Related: Nature, Photography)
"I had done a lot of rock 'n' roll photography when I was in college. I was one of many photographers who worked for The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and all of these rock 'n' roll bands."
- John Dykstra
(Related: College, Photography)
"George Lucas wanted this moving camera for all of the photography in Star Wars. He was willing to take a risk with the concepts that I advanced with regard to ways for doing that."
- John Dykstra
(Related: Photography, Risk)
"Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography."
- George Eastman
(Related: Love, Key, Light, Photography, Will, Worth)
"Once the amateur's naive approach and humble willingness to learn fades away, the creative spirit of good photography dies with it. Every professional should remain always in his heart an amateur."
- Alfred Eisenstaedt
(Related: Heart, Photography, Spirit)
"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
(Related: Art, Observation, Photography)
"There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment. This kind of photography is realism. But realism is not enough - there has to be vision, and the two together can make a good photograph."
- Robert Frank
(Related: Vision, Humanity, Photography, Realism)
"Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected."
- Robert Frank
(Related: Hope, Colors, Despair, Mankind, Photography)
"The clue to book jacket photography is to look friendly and approachable, but not too glamorous."
- Antonia Fraser
(Related: Photography)
"Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second."
- Jean-Luc Godard
(Related: Truth, Cinema, Photography)
"Look at lots of exhibitions and books, and don't get hung up on cameras and technical things. Photography is about images."
- Fay Godwin
(Related: Books, Photography)
"Born Berlin 1931, Germany, father a British diplomat, mother an American artist. Educated at various schools all over the world. 1958 Settled down to live in London. 1966 Became interested in photography through photographing my young children. No formal training."
- Fay Godwin
(Related: Mother, Father, American, Artist, Children, Germany, London, Photography, Schools, Training, World)
"Photography is a way of putting distance between myself and the work which sometimes helps me to see more clearly what it is that I have made."
- Andy Goldsworthy
(Related: Work, Photography)
"As an avid photographer, I also took advantage of the latest technology in photography - digital photography - to post photos on my website on a daily basis."
- Tipper Gore
(Related: Technology, Photography, Post)
"With photography a new language has been created. Now for the first time it is possible to express reality by reality. We can look at an impression as long as we wish, we can delve into it and, so to speak, renew past experiences at will."
- Ernst Haas
(Related: Time, Impression, First, Language, Now, Past, Photography, Reality, Will)
"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
(Related: Limitations, Photography)
"Photography is a very important part of my life."
- Conrad Hall
(Related: Life, Photography)
"Contrast is what makes photography interesting."
- Conrad Hall
(Related: Contrast, Photography)
"I took courses at USC in film editing and art direction and photography when I was still in high school."
- Ray Harryhausen
(Related: Art, Direction, Film, Photography, School)
"You had to be aware that I saw that photography was a mere episode in the history of the optical projection and when the chemicals ended, meaning the picture was fixed by chemicals, we were in a new era."
- David Hockney
(Related: History, Meaning, Photography)
"But slowly I began to use cameras and then think about what it was that was going on. It took me a long time, I mean I actually played with cameras and photography for about 20 years."
- David Hockney
(Related: Time, Photography, Years)
"Photography must be integrated with the story."
- James Wong Howe
(Related: Photography)
"A new era in the physiological investigation of linguistic sounds was opened up by X-ray photography."
- Roman Jakobson
(Related: Investigation, Photography)
"I've got a great collection of photography."
- Elton John
(Related: Photography)
"I also paint, draw and I'm into film and photography as well, and the same thing applies to all of them. You're presenting this material to the general public and hoping that they're going to 'get' what you're doing. Some don't, some do."
- Paul Kane
(Related: Film, Photography, Public)
"It's the first time that I've ever had an art show based on a film, but it's a photography collage."
- Val Kilmer
(Related: Art, Time, Film, First, Photography)
"The beauty of women was the first expression of my photography."
- Alberto Korda
(Related: Beauty, Women, Expression, First, Photography)
"Mapplethorpe presented the body as a sexual object, separating it from the humanity of the person. He added nothing to photography as a medium. I hold his work in low regard."
- Jerzy Kosinski
(Related: Work, Body, Humanity, Nothing, Photography)
"Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still."
- Dorothea Lange
(Related: Life, Time, Photography)
"Photography to me is catching a moment which is passing, and which is true."
- Jacques-Henri Lartigue
(Related: Photography)
"Any time you talk about the look of the film, it's not just the director and the director of photography. You have to include the costume designer and the production designer."
- Spike Lee
(Related: Time, Film, Photography, Production, Talk)
"Computer photography won't be photography as we know it. I think photography will always be chemical."
- Annie Leibovitz
(Related: Computer, Photography, Will)
"The other great development has been in photography, but that too was influenced by Conceptual art."
- Sol LeWitt
(Related: Art, Development, Photography)
"The problem of direct colour photography has been facing us since the turn of the last century."
- Gabriel Lippmann
(Related: Photography)
"I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today's existence."
- Robert Mapplethorpe
(Related: Existence, Madness, Photography, Today)
"With photography, you zero in; you put a lot of energy into short moments, and then you go on to the next thing."
- Robert Mapplethorpe
(Related: Energy, Moments, Photography)
"People don't have time to wait for somebody to paint their portraits anymore. The money is in photography."
- Robert Mapplethorpe
(Related: Money, Time, People, Photography, Portraits)
"Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be."
- Duane Michals
(Related: Deals, Nothing, Photography)
"I don't think that digital photography is romantic yet. It's not sympathetic the way that film is."
- Matthew Modine
(Related: Film, Photography, Romantic)
"If you take 2001: A Space Odyssey as an example of somebody who creates a new language in film by what he was able to accomplish with art direction, photography, lighting, etc., it is still a gold standard for science fiction."
- Matthew Modine
(Related: Art, Science, Direction, Example, Fiction, Film, Gold, Language, Photography, Space)
"Photography is about light and what it does and how it is captured on a piece of negative."
- Matthew Modine
(Related: Negative, Light, Photography)
"For example, Michael Mann's film Collateral - there is certain kinds of stories that lend themselves to digital photography. Some things are very raw stories that digital photography kind of lends itself to."
- Matthew Modine
(Related: Example, Film, Photography)
"I have no fear of photography as long as it cannot be used in heaven and in hell."
- Edvard Munch
(Related: Fear, Heaven, Hell, Photography)
"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
(Related: Illusion, Photography, Reality, World)
"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
(Related: Technology, Ideas, Photography)
"I've been working with photography for many years."
- Leonard Nimoy
(Related: Photography, Years)
"I became involved in photography when I was about thirteen years old."
- Leonard Nimoy
(Related: Old, Photography, Years)
"While I was there I became deeply interested in photography, and indeed the most noteworthy event in my early life was winning first, third, fourth and seventh prizes in an international competition for college and high school students."
- Douglass North
(Related: Life, Winning, College, Competition, First, Photography, Prizes, School, Students)
"Those involved in the program are interested in how to use photography, videos, the Internet, film, and anything related to communications and transmission of information in the most up-to-date modern ways."
- Major Owens
(Related: Film, Information, Internet, Photography)
"I mean, certainly writing, painting, photography, dance, architecture, there is an aspect of almost every art form that is useful and that merges into film in some way."
- Sydney Pollack
(Related: Art, Architecture, Dance, Film, Painting, Photography, Writing)
"Few speeches which have produced an electrical effect on an audience can bear the colourless photography of a printed record."
- Archibald Philip Primrose
(Related: Effect, Photography)
"Actually, when I first started dabbling in photography, I was still working for my parents as a salesman."
- Herb Ritts
(Related: First, Parents, Photography)
"Generally, the French highly promote culture and the arts, and photography is in their blood."
- Herb Ritts
(Related: Blood, Culture, Photography)
"A lot of people think that when you have grand scenery, such as you have in Yosemite, that photography must be easy."
- Galen Rowell
(Related: People, Photography)
"Ever since the 1860s when photographers travelled the American West and brought photographs of scenic wonders back to the people on the East Coast of America we have had a North American tradition of landscape photography used for the environment."
- Galen Rowell
(Related: People, America, American, Environment, Photography, Tradition, Wonders)
"I find it some of the hardest photography and the most challenging photography I've ever done. It's a real challenge to work with the natural features and the natural light."
- Galen Rowell
(Related: Work, Challenge, Light, Photography)
"I think landscape photography in general is somewhat undervalued."
- Galen Rowell
(Related: Photography)
"There is no question that photography has played a major role in the environmental movement."
- Galen Rowell
(Related: Environmental, Photography, Question)
"Oh my goodness gracious, what you can buy off the Internet in terms of overhead photography. A trained ape can know an awful lot of what is going on in this world, just by punching on his mouse, for a relatively modest cost."
- Donald Rumsfeld
(Related: Goodness, Internet, Mouse, Photography, World)
"In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated."
- August Sander
(Related: Photography, Shadows)
"What it all boils down to for me is having the enthusiasm to do something for enjoyment and being stimulated by what's around you. That's what photography does for me."
- Graeme Le Saux
(Related: Enthusiasm, Being, Enjoyment, Photography)
"When you live by the sea, there are definite seasons when you can see the weather coming and going, which lends itself to photography."
- Graeme Le Saux
(Related: Photography, Sea, Seasons, Weather)
"The problem for me is that I've never actually studied photography, so it's quite a steep learning curve. Cameras these days do so much for you automatically but I still think there's a point where you should actually know the technical side."
- Graeme Le Saux
(Related: Learning, Photography)
"My use of the medium - photography - is in some ways traditional."
- Andres Serrano
(Related: Photography)
"In 1979, I received a phone call from Ansel Adams asking me if I would be willing to consider coming to work for him. I was teaching photography in Southern California at that point."
- John Sexton
(Related: Work, Photography, Teaching)
"So when I became interested in photography and further being inspired by the work that I saw of Ansel and others, it was a natural extension to go back to these places that I knew as a kid and explore them with my camera."
- John Sexton
(Related: Work, Being, Photography)
"And friends of mine that had photography class in high school would develop the film and make prints and I'd take them back to the track and give 'em away or try and sell them. Much to my parents' dismay, I majored in photography in college."
- John Sexton
(Related: Class, College, Film, Friends, Parents, Photography, School)
"For me the printing process is part of the magic of photography. It's that magic that can be exciting, disappointing, rewarding and frustrating all in the same few moments in the darkroom."
- John Sexton
(Related: Magic, Moments, Photography, Printing)
"He was a very generous soul and was exceptionally dedicated to the medium of photography."
- John Sexton
(Related: Soul, Photography)
"I took a workshop from him a few months after that. That experience changed my whole approach to photography. At that workshop in Yosemite in 1973 I decided I wanted to try and see if I could pursue this for myself, and I'm still trying."
- John Sexton
(Related: Experience, Months, Photography, Trying)
"I make photographs and still make photographs of the natural environment. It's a love because that was part of my life before I was involved in photography."
- John Sexton
(Related: Life, Love, Environment, Photography)
"Of course I realize that photography is not the technical facility as much as it is the eye, and this decision that one makes for the moment at which you are going to snap, you know."
- Ben Shahn
(Related: Decision, Eye, Photography)
"Now, when I came on to Washington to begin my job, I was so interested in photography at that time that I really would have preferred to work with Stryker than with my department, which was more artistic if you wish."
- Ben Shahn
(Related: Time, Work, Job, Now, Photography, Washington)
"I was so impressed with the work we were doing and I was very involved ideologically in photography - that I arranged an exhibition at the College Art Association. The first exhibition I picked the photographs and so on and we had an exhibition in New York."
- Ben Shahn
(Related: Art, Work, College, First, Photography)
"Now, my knowledge of photography was terribly limited."
- Ben Shahn
(Related: Knowledge, Photography)
"I became interested in photography when I found my own sketching was inadequate."
- Ben Shahn
(Related: Photography)
"I did take my camera along, as I felt there wouldn't be enough time to draw the things I wanted to do. I did some drawing and did a lot of photography but I was not part of Stryker's outfit at all."
- Ben Shahn
(Related: Time, Photography)
"I feel, having the choices I had, I felt I had more control over my own medium than I did over photography."
- Ben Shahn
(Related: Control, Choices, Photography)
"Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever... it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything."
- Aaron Siskind
(Related: Feeling, Film, Photography)
"Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness."
- W. Eugene Smith
(Related: Awareness, Photography, Sense, Voice)
"Maybe I'll paint, do photography, just something else. I can see that."
- Steven Soderbergh
(Related: Photography)
"Then I moved down to the Bowery to this building where Debbie Harry lived. It was there that I started combining some clothes for her and continued doing the art and photography."
- Stephen Sprouse
(Related: Art, Building, Clothes, Photography)
"Music is the doorway that has led me to drawing, photography, and writing."
- Layne Staley
(Related: Music, Photography, Writing)
"Photography is a major force in explaining man to man."
- Edward Steichen
(Related: Force, Man, Photography)
"The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each to himself. And that is the most complicated thing on earth."
- Edward Steichen
(Related: Earth, Man, Mission, Photography)
"The use of the term art medium is, to say the least, misleading, for it is the artist that creates a work of art not the medium. It is the artist in photography that gives form to content by a distillation of ideas, thought, experience, insight and understanding."
- Edward Steichen
(Related: Art, Work, Experience, Thought, Ideas, Artist, Content, Misleading, Photography, Understanding)
"When I first became interested in photography, I thought it was the whole cheese. My idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don't give a hoot in hell about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself."
- Edward Steichen
(Related: Thought, Idea, First, Hell, Man, Mission, Photography, Today)
"Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man."
- Edward Steichen
(Related: Beauty, Feelings, Wealth, Confusion, Earth, Force, Man, Photography)
"My interest in architecture has always been sculptural. Most of my photography is of architecture."
- Parker Stevenson
(Related: Architecture, Interest, Photography)
"The arts equally have distinct departments, and unless photography has its own possibilities of expression, separate from those of the other arts, it is merely a process, not an art."
- Alfred Stieglitz
(Related: Art, Expression, Photography, Possibilities)
"In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality."
- Alfred Stieglitz
(Related: Photography, Reality)
"Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees."
- Paul Strand
(Related: Living, Photography)
"I love photography. My boyfriend's got a great camera, which I bought for his birthday."
- Sarah Sutton
(Related: Birthday, Love, Boyfriend, Photography)
"Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be."
- Edward Weston
(Related: Work, Hard work, Photography, Recreation)
"Photography suits the temper of this age - of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately."
- Edward Weston
(Related: Age, Ideas, Mind, Painting, Photography, Temper)
"My son does a little photography, but he's not involved the way I was."
- Kim Weston
(Related: Son, Photography)
"I don't need the money I generate from photography to support myself."
- Kim Weston
(Related: Money, Photography, Support)
"Growing up, I didn't give my grandfather's photography a second thought. I wasn't involved in his work, except that I helped my dad print his negatives."
- Kim Weston
(Related: Dad, Work, Thought, Growing up, Photography)
"In the world of photography, you get to share a captured moment with other people."
- James Wilson
(Related: People, Photography, World)
"I was an artistic dilettante for a while, in photography and collage and the visual arts."
- Thomas Wilson
(Related: Photography)
"I rode it once, which was up the driveway in the opening credits of the show. I didn't know how to stop it. I actually nearly killed the director of photography, and I smashed into the sound truck."
- Henry Winkler
(Related: Photography, Sound)
"Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts."
- Garry Winogrand
(Related: Change, Facts, Photography)
"I have very interesting hobbies like archeology and photography."
- Bill Wyman
(Related: Hobbies, Photography)
"I open events for museums and I do charity work and photography."
- Bill Wyman
(Related: Work, Charity, Events, Museums, Open, Photography)
"Moreover, photography has made it possible to fix these images and now provides us with a permanent record of each observed spectrum, which can be measured out at any time."
- Pieter Zeeman
(Related: Time, Now, Photography)