Photographer Quotes - Page 38

• Photographs will always be impressive because they show us nature, and all artists will find in them a world of sensations. The photographer must therefore intervene as little as possible, so as not to cause photography to lose the objective charm which it naturally possesses, notwithstanding its defects.

  Henri Matisse

  Photography, Artist, World

  Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1995). “Matisse on Art”, p.44, Univ of California Press

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• The photographer, like an acrobat, must defy the laws of probability or even of possibility; at the limit, he must defy those of the interesting: the photograph becomes surprising when we do not know why it has been taken.

  Roland Barthes

  Taken, Law, Interesting

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• A photograph is a meeting place where the interests of the photographer, the photographed, the viewer and those who are using the photograph are often contradictory. These contradictions both hide and increase the natural ambiguity of the photographic image.

  John Berger

  Contradiction, Natural, Increase

  John Berger, Jean Mohr (2016). “Another Way of Telling: A Possible Theory of Photography”, p.4, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Is giving in to the photographer's presumably natural impulse to compose and light well sometimes okay and not okay other times?

  David Byrne

  Light, Giving, Sometimes

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• A picture is like a prayer.

  Harry Callahan

  Photography, Prayer

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• The images which the [press] photographer has filtered from reality, whether particular events or the anguish of human reactions to them, already bear a stamp of authenticity which the photographer is powerless to alter by one jot or tittle; the meaning of the objects, by a process of purification, itself becomes the theme of the work.

  Yukio Mishima

  Reality, Events, Bears

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• If the photographer is to create works that will stand for his spirit in the same way as artists in other genres, he must first - having no ready-made, abstract components such as works and sounds - supply other means to abstraction instead.

  Yukio Mishima

  Mean, Artist, Firsts

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• The vast number of photographers, feeding on anything visible, overgraze the landscape the way cattle overgraze their pasture.

  Wright Morris

  Numbers, Landscape, Way

  Wright Morris (1989). “Time pieces: photographs, writing, and memory”

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• My friend, why should you wish to shorten my life by taking from me my shadow? (To photographer Dr. Valentine T. McGillycuddy.)

  Crazy Horse

  Valentine, Wish, Shadow

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• I'm not a nice girl; I'm a photographer. (On being told by a Federal Art Project official, after she photographed the Bowery, that a nice girl should not go into such neighborhoods )

  Berenice Abbott

  Girl, Art, Nice

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• Snap. Lady with dog. Lady on sofa half-naked. Snap. Naked lady. Lady next to dresser. Lady at window. Snap. Lady on balcony sunlight. (On New Orleans photographer E. J. Bellocq)

  Michael Ondaatje

  Dog, New Orleans, Naked

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• Photographers find themselves directly in competition with mass media's misrepresentations of women. So the photographic terrain is particularly contested from a political point of view.

  Lucy R. Lippard

  Views, Media, Political

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• When everything that is called art was well and truly riddled with rheumatism, the photographer lit the thousands of candles whose power is contained in his flame, and the sensitive paper absorbed by degrees the blackness cut out of some ordinary object. He had invented a fresh and tender flash of lightning.

  Tristan Tzara

  Art, Cutting, Flames

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• If I'd had the nerve, I'd have become a thief or a gangster, but since I didn't, I became a photographer.

  Man Ray

  Thieves, Nerves, Gangsters

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• You know, they always say that the photographer is a hunter of images. That is a flattering image, the idea of a hunter, it's virile, acquired power. Actually though, it isn't that. We are really fishermen with hooks and lines.

  Robert Doisneau

  Ideas, Lines, Hunters

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• The photographer must be absorbent - like a blotter, allow himself to be permeated by the poetic moment... His technique should be like an animal function... he should act automatically.

  Robert Doisneau

  Animal, Technique, Poetic

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• [The] arresting of time is photography's unique capacity, and the decision of when to click the shutter is the photographer's chief responsibility.

  Janet Malcolm

  Photography, Responsibility, Unique

  Janet Malcolm (1997). “Diana & Nikon: Essays on Photography”

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• In a way, it's like the photographer always has his vision of me. The pictures that I'm known for are not really my image, they're always the photographer's vision of me. I can look a hundred different ways, but what people see of me in pictures is not really my image.

  Kate Moss

  People, Vision, Different

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• The photographer proceeds, via the intermediary of the lens, to a point where he literally takes a luminous imprint, a cast... [But] the cinema realizes the paradox of moulding itself on the time of the object and of taking the imprint of its duration as well.

  Andre Bazin

  Duration, Lenses, Cinema

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• Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others. Photography is still a very new medium and everything is allowed and everything should be tried and dared... Photography has no rules. It is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it was achieved.

  Bill Brandt

  Sports, Photography, Fads

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• The [concentration camps] were swarming with photographers and every new picture of horror served only to diminish the total effect. Now, for a short day, everyone will see what happened to those poor devils in those camps; tomorrow, very few will care what happens to them in the future.

  Robert Capa

  Devil, Care, Tomorrow

  Robert Capa (2015). “Slightly Out Of Focus”, p.245, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• 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

  Photography, Art, Reality

  Yvonne Halsman, Philippe Halsman (1989). “Halsman at work: Philippe Halsman and Yvonne Halsman”, Harry N Abrams Inc

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• I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.

  Harry Callahan

  Photography, Believe, People

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• I've had my body manipulated so many different times for so many different reasons, whether it's paparazzi photographers or for film posters.

  Keira Knightley

  Different, Body, Film

  "Is Keira Knightley's topless photoshoot the best form of protest?" by Hadley Freeman, www.theguardian.com. November 10, 2014.

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• [Photography] can be tiny, on your phone, or it can be a billboard, or a film-sized projection, or printed in a magazine. I don't think we've been in a time before when so much photography is available in so many formats, when everybody is a photographer.

  Christian Marclay

  Photography, Thinking, Phones

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