Quotes from Photographers

Edward Weston

“Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it may be.”
“The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.”
“I cannot believe I learned anything of value in school unless it be the will to rebel.”
“I want the stark beauty that a lens can so exactly render presented without interference of artistic effect.”

Ansel Adams

‘To the complaint, ‘There are no people in these photographs,’ I respond, ‘There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.’
“I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term — meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching — there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.”
“No man has the right to dictate what other men should perceive, create or produce, but all should be encouraged to reveal themselves, their perceptions and emotions, and to build confidence in the creative spirit.”

Henri Cartier Bresson

“Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.”

Margaret Bourke-White

“Work is something you can count on, a trusted, lifelong friend who never deserts you.”
Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand.

Robert Frank

“When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.”
“You do your work as a photographer and everything becomes past. Words are more like thoughts; the photographer’s picture is always surrounded by a kind of romantic glamor – no matter what you do, and how you twist it.”

Alfred Stieglitz

“Photography is a fad well-neigh on its last legs, thanks principally to the bicycle craze.”
“I have always been a great believer in today. Most people live either in the past or in the future, so that they really never live at all. So many people are busy worrying about the future of art or society, they have no time to preserve what is. Utopia is in the moment. Not in some future time, some other place, but in the here and now, or else it is nowhere.”
“Nearly right is child’s play.”
“Photography is not an art. Neither is painting not sculpture, literature or music. They are only different media for the individual to express his aesthetic feelings… You do not have to be a painter or a sculptor to be an artist. You may be a shoemaker. You may be creative as such. And if so you are a greater artist than the majority of the painters whose work is shown in the art galleries of today.”

Annie Leibovitz

“A very subtle difference can make the picture or not.”
“I am impressed with what happens when someone stays in the same place and you took the same picture over and over and it would be different, every single frame.”
“I don’t think there is anything wrong with white space. I don’t think it’s a problem to have a blank wall.”
“I wish that all of nature’s magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed.”
“In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view. The image may not be literally what’s going on, but it’s representative.”

Kirk Tuck