Quotes on Photography

A photograph is not an accident - is a concept. It exists at, or before, the moment of exposure of the negative.

In a photograph, if I am able to evoke not alone a feeling of the reality of the surface physical world but also a feeling of the reality of existence that lies mysteriously and invisibly beneath its surface, I feel I have succeeded. At their best, photographs as symbols not only serve to help illuminate some of the darkness of the unknown, they also serve to lessen the fears that too often accompany the journeys from the known to the unknown.

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.

To the vast majority of people a photograph is an image of something within their direct experience: a more-or-less factual reality. It is difficult for them to realize that the photograph can be the source of experience, as well as the reflection of spiritual awareness of the world and of self.

Bad weather makes for good photography.

The main thing is to study pictures and stop listening to the pontifictaions of photographers. Photographers aren't oracles of wisdom. If they're good photographers, then take a good look at their pictures - what else do you need?

This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.

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.

Ultimately, Photography is subversive, not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks.

To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge-and therefore, like power.

I would exchange every painting of Christ for one snapshot.

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

While a painting, even one that meets photographic standards of resemblance, is never more than the stating of an interpretation, a photograph is never less than the registering of an emanation (light waves reflected by objects) — a material vestige of its subject in a way that no painting can be.

Photography can light-up darkness and expose ignorance.

While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.

Many photographers think they are photographing nature when they are only caricaturing her.

Our job is to record, each in his own way, this world of light and shadow and time that will never come again exactly as it is today.

"Only with effort can the camera be forced to lie: basically it is an honest medium: so the photographer is much more likely to approach nature in a spirit of inquiry, of communion, instead of with the saucy swagger of self-dubbed "artists"."