Famous Quotes & Sayings

Harry Callahan

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

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.

Harold Evans

The camera cannot lie, but it can be an accessory to untruth.

J. G. Ballard

Nudity in photography, whether involving adults or children, is a subject sinking under a freight of political and moral disapproval it could never hope to support, and this is not the place for me to get out the bilge pump. I will only say that critics who tremble so fiercely at the thought of the voyeuristic male gaze miss the point that distance generates mystery and enchantment, and expresses the awe with which the male imagination regards all women.

Italo Calvino

Photography has a meaning only if it exhausts all possible images.

Irving Penn

I feed on art more than I ever do on photographs. I can admire photography, but I wouldn't go to it out of hunger.

Irving Penn

Working on photography is working on oneself.

Irving Penn

In portrait photography there is something more profound that we seek inside a person, while being painfully aware that a limitation of our medium is that the inside is recordable only insofar as it is apparent on the outside...Very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe.

Irving Penn

Photographing a cake can be art.

Jack Kerouac

Contrary to the general belief about photography, you don't need bright sunlight: the best moodiest pictures are taken in the dim light of almost dusk, or of rainy days...

Bianca Jagger

Photography speaks a universal language that does not need translation, and with an immediacy that the written word lacks. It freezes a moment in time, leaving an indelible image.

Cecil Beaton

You can't teach people photography, they've got to learn how to do it the best way possible for them. They can learn from looking at pictures taken by well-known people, but they don't really get intimate with the medium until they've made a few bad shots!

Carrie Mae Weems

I didnt know photography would take me to the places that it has taken me

Carrie Mae Weems

Photography can still be used to champion activism and change. I believe this, even while standing in the cool winds of postmodernism... Postmodernism looked radical, but it wasn't. As a movement it was profoundly liberal and became a victim of itself. Precisely at this historical moment, when multicultural democracy is the order of the day, photography can be used as a powerful weapon toward instituting political and cultural change. I for one will continue to work toward this end.

Carl Sagan

He sought a way to preserve the past. John Hershel was one of the founders of a new form of time travel.... a means to capture light and memories. He actually coined a word for it... photography. When you think about it, photography is a form of time travel. This man is staring at us from across the centuries, a ghost preserved by light.

Antonia Fraser

The clue to book jacket photography is to look friendly and approachable, but not too glamorous.

Anton Corbijn

Apart from photography and music videos, I also do graphic design.

Anton Corbijn

The really simple approach to photography is a great balance to making the films.

Anton Corbijn

I don't think I treat my film work as an extension of my photography. There are two different sets of rules there.

Anton Corbijn

My photography is very European. In America, I always get the sense that people are comforted by understanding what they're looking at. Photography's quite clear here [in the U.S.], it's very well-explained. My photography's perhaps not as well-explained.

Anton Corbijn

With photography, you are lucky if you get people to look at your pictures at some point. There's no formal way to show them.

Anton Corbijn

Photography has taken me from isolation.

Anton Corbijn

Photography was the only thing that mattered in my life and I gave it everything.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

The essential things in life are seen, not with the eyes but with the heart.

Bill Brandt

I am not very interested in extraordinary angles. They can be effective on certain occasions, but I do not feel the necessity for them in my own work. Indeed, I feel the simplest approach can often be most effective. A subject placed squarely in the center of the frame, if attention is not distracted from it by fussy surroundings, has a simple dignity which makes it all the more impressive.

Bill Brandt

But I did not always know just what it was I wanted to photograph. I believe it is important for a photographer to discover this, for unless he finds what it is that excites him, what it is that calls forth at once an emotional response, he is unlikely to achieve his best work.

Bill Brandt

By temperament I am not unduly excitable and certainly not trigger-happy. I think twice before I shoot and very often do not shoot at all. By professional standards I do not waste a lot of film; but by the standards of many of my colleagues I probably miss quite a few of my opportunities. Still, the things I am after are not in a hurry as a rule.

Bill Brandt

If there is any method in the way I take pictures, I believe it lies in this: See the subject first. Do not try to force it to be a picture of this, that or the other thing. Stand apart from it. Then something will happen. The subject will reveal itself.

Bill Brandt

I consider it essential that the photographer should do his own printing and enlarging. The final effect of the finished print depends so much on these operations.

Bill Brandt

Sometimes they are a matter of luck; the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates.

Bill Brandt

It is essential for the photographer to know the effect of his lenses. The lens is his eye, and it makes or ruins his pictures. A feeling for composition is a great asset. I think it is very much a matter of instinct. It can perhaps be developed, but I doubt if it can be learned. To achieve his best work, the young photographer must discover what really excites him visually. He must discover his own world.

Bill Brandt

No amount of toying with shades of print or with printing papers will transform a commonplace photograph into anything other than a commonplace photograph.

Bill Brandt

And only the photographer himself knows the effect he wants. He should know by instinct, grounded in experience, what subjects are enhanced by hard or soft, light or dark treatment.