Famous Quotes & Sayings

Pierre Bourdieu

Photography itself is most frequently nothing but the reproduction of the image that a group produces of its own integration.

Pierre Bourdieu

In stamping photography with the patent of realism, society does nothing but confirm itself in the tautological certainty that an image of reality that conforms to its own representation of objectivity is truly objective.

Philippe Halsman

No photographer should be blamed when, instead of capturing reality, he tries to show things he has seen only in his imagination. Photography is the youngest art form. All attempts to enlarge its frontiers are important and should be encouraged.

Philippe Halsman

I drifted into photography like one drifts into prostitution. First I did it to please myself, then I did it to please my friends, and eventually I did it for the money.

Peter Lindbergh

I started photography more or less by accident when I was already 27. I was taken on as an assistant by a photographer who was a friend of a friend and I very quickly understood the potential of expression in photography.

Peter Lindbergh

In 1990 I did a story with Helena Christensen about a woman who lives in a trailer in the middle of the desert and finds a little crushed UFO with a martian who has survived the crash. She takes him home, and they fall in love. Later he has to meet with his fellow martians who have arrived to rescue him. It's a sad ending. This was my first truly narrative story and apparently the first narrative story in fashion photography.

Peter Lindbergh

Photography is no longer a love affair with the beauty of reality.

Peter Lindbergh

Now people ask whether photography is art, but I think the question is of absolutely no interest.

Peter Lindbergh

The discussion about whether photography is or isn't art is dated and of no interest. Your work makes you an artist, not your title.

Peter Lindbergh

I believe that the source of your inspiration is very important. I sometimes see this problem with photographers, even very good ones, who have drawn too much inspiration from photography and who, over time, have a problem forming their own identity.

Peter Lindbergh

Photography gives you the opportunity to use your sensibility and everything you are to say something about and be part of the world around you. In this way, you might discover who you are, and with a little luck, you might discover something much larger than yourself.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits.

Minor White

We emphasized the creativeness that happens at the moment of seeing over the kind that takes place in the dark room.

Minor White

The development of a love of medium and a responsibility for one's own pictures is an overall goal.

Minor White

Different levels of photography require different levels of understanding and skill. A "press the button, let George do the rest" photographer needs little or no technical knowledge of photography. A zone system photographer takes more responsibility. He visualizes before he presses the button, and afterwards calibrates for predictable print values.

Minor White

Some of the young photographers today enter photography where I leave off. My "grandchildren" astound me. What I worked for they seem to be born with. So I wonder where Their affirmations of Spirit will lead. My wish for them is that their unfolding proceeds to fullness of Spirit, however astonishing or anguished their lives.

Minor White

Students were taught by doing.

Minor White

Let the subject generate its own photographs. Become a camera.

Minor White

Often while traveling with a camera we arrive just as the sun slips over the horizon of a moment, too late to expose film, only time enough to expose our hearts.

Minor White

We could teach photography as a way to make a living, and best of all, somehow to get students to experience for themselves photography as a way of life.

Minor White

Reaching a 'creative' state of mind thru positive action is considered preferable to waiting for 'inspiration'.

Minor White

The photographer projects himself into everything he sees, identifying himself with everything in order to know it and to feel it better.

Minor White

Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.

Minor White

Photography is a language more universal than words.

Minor White

At first glance a photograph can inform us. At second glance it can reach us.

Minor White

There's no particular class of photograph that I think is any better than any other class. I'm always and forever looking for the image that has spirit! I don't give a damn how it got made.

Minor White

No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen.

Minor White

I'm always mentally photographing everything as practice.

Minor White

One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are.

Minor White

When gifts are given to me through my camera, I accept them graciously.

Paula Patton

A movie is painting, it's photography, it's literature - because you have to have the screenplay - it's music. Put a different soundtrack to a comedy and it's a tragedy. A movie combines all those forms and forces you to pay attention for two hours with a group of people.

Peter Thiel

Consider the trivial but revealing hallmarks of urban hipsterdom: faux vintage photography, the handlebar mustache, and vinyl record players all hark back to an earlier time when people were still optimistic about the future. If everything worth doing has already been done, you may as well feign an allergy to achievement and become a barista.

Teju Cole

I often say I've spent more time with photography than I have with literature just in terms of hours.