Photojournalists Quotes

• As photojournalists, we supply information to a world that is overwhelmed with preoccupations and full of people who need the company of images....We pass judgement on what we see, and this involves an enormous responsibility.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Responsibility, People, Judgement

  58 Copy quote

• If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that's a good picture.

  Eddie Adams

  Photography, Laughter, Rip

  94 Copy quote

• It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart and head.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Eye, Heart

  1990 Copy quote

• You are not just a photojournalist, you're a historian.

  Bill Eppridge

  Historian

  9 Copy quote

• If you want to be a photographer, particularly a photojournalist , you want to learn about the world. You want to learn about yourself. And you want to find things that you genuinely care about, because that will be the source of your greatest work.

  Ed Kashi

  World, Care, Want

  47 Copy quote

• To be a photojournalist takes experience, skill, endurance, energy, salesmanship, organization, wheedling, climbing, gatecrashing, etc. - plus an eye and patience.

  Ruth Orkin

  Eye, Climbing, Skills

  7 Copy quote

• The pictures are there, and you just take them.

  Robert Capa

  Photography, Art, Photojournalism

  77 Copy quote

• I am an idealist. I often feel I would like to be an artist in an ivory tower. Yet it is imperative that I speak to people, so I must desert that ivory tower. To do this, I am a journalist - a photojournalist. But I am always torn between the attitude of the journalist, who is a recorder of facts, and the artist, who is often necessarily at odds with the facts. My principle concern is for honesty, above all honesty with myself.

  W. Eugene Smith

  Honesty, Attitude, Artist

  8 Copy quote

• Nothing came easy. I was just born with a need to explore every part of my mind. And with long searching and hard work, I became devoted to my restlessness.

  Gordon Parks

  Hard Work, Long, African American

  82 Copy quote

• Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.

  Marc Riboud

  Inspirational, Life, Photography

  71 Copy quote

• I do love acting. But to work as a photojournalist would have been extraordinary.

  Jessica Lange

  Acting, Extraordinary, Has Beens

  9 Copy quote

• If you photograph for a long time, you get to understand such things as body language. I often do not look at people I photograph, especially afterwards. Also when I want a photo, I become somewhat fearless, and this helps a lot. There will always be someone who objects to being photographed, and when this happens you move on.

  Martin Parr

  Moving On, Photography, Long

  62 Copy quote

• Photojournalists know the horrors of war can only be exposed at close range. Kodak Film.

  James Nachtwey

  Photography, War, Horror

  8 Copy quote
• 

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

  Dorothea Lange

  Inspirational, Life, Change

  101 Copy quote

• Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.

  Walker Evans

  Photography, Art, Eye

  66 Copy quote

• The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist.

  Kevin Carter

  Life, Suicide, Pain

  139 Copy quote

• Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness.

  W. Eugene Smith

  Photography, Voice, Groups

  W. Eugene Smith (1981). “W. Eugene Smith, master of the photographic essay”

  74 Copy quote

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• As we all know, the objective and mission of the photojournalist is to show us the reality of the world. And in order to capture that reality, they go to dangerous and tragic places at the expense of their lives. I see them as the conscience of our humanity; they represent for me what is left of our humanity.

  Alfredo Jaar

  Reality, Order, Humanity

  Interview, brooklynrail.org. April 6, 2009.

  14 Copy quote

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• I only use a camera like I use a toothbrush. It does the job.

  Don McCullin

  Photography, Jobs, Cameras

  53 Copy quote

• Be yourself. I much prefer seeing something, even it is clumsy, that doesn't look like somebody else's work.

  William Klein

  Inspirational, Photography, Being Yourself

  65 Copy quote

• F8 And Be There! For years, this was the cry of the photojournalist. It meant that 90% of a great photo was being in the right place at the right time. True, it was simplistic, but in the Age of Photoshop, this maxim is too often forgotten. No matter how much you play with the bits and bytes, the best images always start out with a great vision, clearly and cleanly seen.

  Dewitt Jones

  Photography, Years, Play

  19 Copy quote

• I don't want you to understand the details. To feel how it feels, you just have to be on the ground with the people. That's where photojournalists have a lot of magic.

  Shaul Schwarz

  People, Magic, Details

  Source: collider.com

  5 Copy quote

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• As an emerging photojournalist in the early 70s, my focus was on trying to create stories for magazines to the exclusion of almost everything else. I wish someone had told me then that the most personally important pictures you’ll ever make are those about you and your life.  I’m glad I had the chance to work for some great magazines, but I really miss those little everyday images, the ones that take place in and around your own life, which will never make the news.  Don’t sell yourself short: photograph your own life, not just everyone else’s.

  David Burnett

  Focus, Missing, Everyday

  9 Copy quote

• What does a professional photojournalist do that others cannot? Depicting photo opportunities as if they are authentic, covering press conferences, or making subjects play their assigned roles (the poor as passive victims, celebrities as glamorous) are hardly adequate responses. In fact, these might be reasons to ask for the help of amateurs who do not know how to stylize their imagery and are not interested in making a publication seem more palatable to its potential consumers.

  Fred Ritchin

  Opportunity, Play, Covering

  Source: www.motherjones.com

  4 Copy quote

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• Unfortunately, conflicts have always been there and they don't seem to be stopping. I'm a journalist and a photojournalist at heart, and I think that we have to be there always to cover it.

  Shaul Schwarz

  Heart, Thinking, Stopping

  Source: collider.com

  4 Copy quote

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