Famous Quotes & Sayings

Gordon Parks

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

If you don't have anything to say, your photographs aren't going to say much.

Gordon Parks

The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer.

John Loengard

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

Perishability in a photograph is important in a picture. If a photograph looks perishable we say, "Gee, I'm glad I have that moment."

John Baldessari

Ideally I would like the work to be a hybrid between painting and photography.

John Baldessari

There's no such thing as a bad photograph.

John Baldessari

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

John Baldessari

I could never figure out why photography and art had separate histories. So I decided to explore both.

But empirically I've come to understand that my photographs really don't do any harm.

George Lucas

I wanted to transfer to an art school, and ended up going to the University of Southern California. They had a cinematography school, and I said "Well, that's sort of like photography, maybe that will be interesting." And once I started in that department, I found what it was that I loved and was good at.

George Lucas

I wanted to be a car mechanic and I wanted to race cars and the idea of trying to make something out of my life wasn't really a priority. But the accident allowed me to apply myself at school. I got great grades. Eventually I got very excited about anthropology and about social sciences and psychology, and I was able to push my photography even further and eventually discovered film and film schools.

George Lucas

I was going to go to a four-year college and be an anthropologist or to an art school and be an illustrator when a friend convinced me to learn photography at the University of Southern California. Little did I know it was a school that taught you how to make movies! It had never occurred to me that I'd ever have any interest in filmmaking.

This photo is a symbol and a reminder for our University community.

Clemence Poesy

When it comes to photo shoots, there was a clear moment for me when I thought, 'I'm going to have to enjoy this because it's going to be a part of what I do.'

Colleen Atwood

I choose colors I like and will photograph well. I don't do color theory!

David LaChapelle

I was always painting when I was a kid. But then when I handled a camera when I was 17, that was it for me. I loved photography. I would work 4 or 5 hours a day. It was like a calling.

David LaChapelle

People say photographs don't lie, mine do.

David LaChapelle

I'm a photographer, period. I love photography, the immediacy of it. I like the craft, the idea of saying 'I'm a photographer.'

For the artist who practises photography, capturing the image is learning how to sketch on some medium, but is only half the challenge; learning how to print is applying a subjective pallet to that sketch, and completes the creative process.

David Hockney

There is nothing wrong with photography, if you don't mind the perspective of a paralysed Cyclops.

David Hockney

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

Photographs aren't accounts of scrutiny. The shutter is open for a fraction of a second.

David Hockney

Because I'm interested in depiction, representation, therefore you're interested in photography. You don't ignore it.

David Hockney

The video camera dominates art. It's a bore, it makes everything look a bit the same. If you look at things with a pencil and paper in your hand, you are going to see far more.

David Hockney

I've finally figured out what's wrong with photography. It's a one-eyed man looking through a little 'ole. Now, how much reality can there be in that?

David Hockney

I was always interested in photography because it makes a picture.

David Hockney

The history of photography needs clearing out. It needs something else now. Because photography always acknowledged there were cameras before photography.

David Hockney

I think we seem to remember things in still pictures. I never gave up on painting. When they said painting was dead, I just thought, Well, that's all about photography, and photography's not that interesting, and it's changing anyway.

David Hockney

Modernism in a way, early modernism, for instance, in pictures, was turning against perspective and Europe . And all early modernism is actually from out of Europe, when you think of cubism is African, is looking at Africa, Matisse is looking at the arabesque, Oceania. Europe was the optical projection that had become photography, that had become film, that became television and it conquered the world.

David Hockney

I think photography has made us see the landscape in a very dull way - that's one of its effects. It's not spatial.

David Hockney

Photography sees surfaces, it doesn't see space. We see space but the camera doesn't.

Arnold Newman

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