Dorothea Lange

One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind.

Being disabled gave me an immense advantage. People are kinder to you. It puts you on a different level than if you go into a situation whole and secure.

Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.

The words that come direct from the people are the greatest.If you substitute one out of your own vocabulary, it disappears before your eyes.

Photographers stop photographing a subject too soon before they have exhausted the possibilities.

You go into a room and you know where you're welcome; you know where you're unwelcome.Sometimes in a hostile situation you stick around because hostility itself is important.The people who are garrulous and wear their heart on their sleeve and tell you everything, that's one kind of person, but the fellow who's hiding behind a tree and hoping you don't see him is the fellow that you'd better find out why.

I believe in living with the camera, and not using the camera.

A camera teaches you how to see without a camera.

I had to get my camera to register things that were more important than how poor they were--their pride, their strength, their spirit.

To me, beauty appears when one feels deeply, and art is an act of total attention.

Seeing is more than a physiological phenomenon... We see not only with our eyes but with all that we are and all that our culture is. The artist is a professional see-er.

A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.

It is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque.

That frame of mind that you need to make fine pictures of a very wonderful subject, you cannot do it by not being lost yourself.

Photography today appears to be in a state of flight... The familiar is made strange, the unfamiliar grotesque. The amateur forces his Sundays into a series of unnatural poses.

One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind. To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.

Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion... the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate.

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.

It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.