Quotes on Photography

The reason why we want to remember an image varies: because we simply 'love it,' or dislike it so intensely that it becomes compulsive, or because it has made us realize something about ourselves, or has brought about some slight change in us. Perhaps the reader can recall some image, after the seeing of which he has never been quite the same.

In the end, the only heritage we have is our planet, and I have decided to go to the most pristine places on the planet and photograph them in the most honest way I know, with my point of view, and of course it is in black and white, because it is the only thing I know how to do.

Photography has always reminded me of the second child.. trying to prove itself. The fact that it wasn't really considered an art.. that it was considered a craft.. has trapped almost every serious photographer.

I'm not responsible for my photographs. Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. It's drowning yourself, dissolving yourself, and then sniff, sniff, sniff - being sensitive to coincidence. You can't go looking for it; you can't want it, or you won't get it. First you must lose your self. Then it happens.

Photography is a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. The contest can be held anywhere.

Photography is an investigation of both the outer and the inner worlds. The first experiences with the camera involve looking at the world beyond the lens, trusting the instrument will 'capture' something 'seen.' The terms shoot and take are not accidental; they represent an attitude of conquest and appropriation. Only when the photographer grows into perception and creative impulse does the term make define a condition of empathy between the external and the internal events.

Photography of any living being, according to Taliban rule, was illegal. So when I went to Afghanistan, immediately I was worried about photographing people. But it was what I wanted: to show what life was like under the Taliban, specifically for women.

If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, I want to come to your house and have you talk to me and tell me the story of your life. I mean people are going to say, You're crazy. Plus they're going to keep mighty guarded. But the camera is a kind of license. A lot of people, they want to be paid that much attention and that's a reasonable kind of attention to be paid.

I've never made any picture, good or bad, without paying for it in emotional turmoil.

It's always seemed to me that photography tends to deal with facts whereas film tends to deal with fiction.

Photography is an art of observation - it's about creating something extraordinary out of the ordinary. You choose a frame and then wait until the right time for something magical to come along and fill it.

I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse.

I wish that all of nature's magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed.

A photographer must always work with the greatest respect for his subject and in terms of his own point of view.

As industrialization provided social uses for the operations of the photographer, so the reaction against these uses reinforced the self-consciousness of photography-as-art.

If I like many photographers, and I do, I account for this by noting a quality they share - animation. They may or may not make a living by photography, but they are alive by it.

All the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an advantage from his absence. Photography affects us like a phenomenon in nature, like a flower or a snowflake whose vegetable or earthly origins are an inseparable part of their beauty.

I believe that, through the act of living, the discovery of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us.

Photography is about being exquisitely present.

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.

I started out on photography accidentally. A policeman came to a stop at the end of my street, and a guy knifed him at the end of my street. That's how I became a photographer. I photographed the gangs that I went to school with.