Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
There's nobody between you and the print. Nobody. It's you and the subject and the final print. And if you get it published that way, you've said it.
[The photograph is] still a space to reorganize our thoughts about reality and our place in the world. How do you disentangle the surface of reality?
It's always more comforting to know that in any given corner of any room or any location you're on, you can make a photograph that you'll appreciate.
You must not think of yourself as looking at the stage from the audience. You must think of it as theatre in the round and look at it from all sides.
Ansel Adams rattled around the Southwest with his battered truck and his view camera, which looked like a giant accordion with a lens attached to it.
A lot of what I am looking for is a moment of astonishment, he says. Those moments of pure consciousness when you involuntarily inhale and say 'Wow!'
Through the experience of art, the powers of perception and transformation can be awakened, in both those who create it and those who re-perceive it.
How do you find a way to say what an extraordinary experience it is to be alive in this world? That is the kind of subject matter I try to work with.
We live in a homogenized world, where it's hard to get excited when everything is slick and professional. The interesting things are the dull things.
My allegiance was always to the act. I wanted them to be happy. I wasn't owned by a magazine or a record label. And I was a very naughty boy to boot!
If all your life means to you is water running over rocks, then photograph it, but I want to create something that would not have existed without me.
I like it [Rotterdam] much better than Amsterdam which is too much like a postcard. It's too cute for me. Rotterdam is more real, it's got a stomach.
You are either born to be a photographer or not. The art of photography is not something you can learn in the classroom or by watching someone do it.
I have always tried to keep truth in my photographs. My work, whether realistic or abstract, has always dealt with a form of religion or imagination.
I suddenly had to chase after my pictures... Pictures are like taxis during rush hour - if you're not fast enough, someone else will get there first.
When I have sex with someone I forget who I am. For a minute I even forget I'm human. It's the same thing when I'm behind a camera. I forget I exist.
These dog bones are just making art the way art should be made, without any overarching reference. Just for fun, if you can imagine that-art for fun.
I'm not a good photographer, not a good writer. I'm a pretty regular person whose insecurity is so pervasive that it makes me always feel vulnerable.
Herbalife has been a part of the most challenging expeditions that I've done and the products have become a really critical and ongoing part my diet.
Going into a shoot not fully knowing what I want to do - that excitement, that thing that happens, is just so powerful and makes such great pictures.
[The photograph] is fabricated out of the unfabricated dross of passing life (while paradoxically still trading on the indexical heft of that dross).
Even though I am a mathematician, I look at [fetal development] with marvel: How do these instruction sets not make mistakes as they build what is us?
I hope that my work will encourage self expression in others and stimulate the search for beauty and creative excitement in the great world around us.
In conclusion, the idea of direction on the part of the photographer has its greatest value when its processes are least discernible to the spectator.
I hate nothing more than sugary photographs with tricks, poses and effects. So allow me to be honest ?and tell the truth about our age and its people.
I don't care about the Guggenheim. The Guggenheim isn't involved in anything that I am interested in. I don't care about motorcycles and Armani suits.
When I stop working, I go out and start working again. Most people paint a picture, or whatever they do, and go home. For me, it has to be continuous.
I've finally figured out what's wrong with photography. It's a one-eyed man looking through a little 'ole. Now, how much reality can there be in that?
What I always longed to do was to be able to paint like I can draw, most artists would tell you that, they would all like to paint like they can draw.
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.
The boy and girl going hand in hand through a meadow; the mother washing her baby; the sweet simple things in life. We have almost lost track of them.
I have no idea what's going to happen. Who knows - if they can't afford to buy a boat, maybe they buy a print. Who knows what happens with their buck?
If I photograph you I don't have you, I have a photograph of you. It's got its own thing. That's really what photography, still photography, is about.
Culture shock is often felt sharply at the borders between countries, but sometimes it doesn't hit fully until you've been in a place for a long time.
If you take away the fancy graphics of today's games, most of the time you're left with a shell of a game that has been done to death a million times.
If one really knew what one was doing, why do it? It seems to me if you had the answer why ask the question? The thing is there are so many questions.
Charm, I think, is education, really, no? I was educated to be nice to everybody. If you want to be rude and mean, I'm sure your life isn't that nice.
We have had bird's-eye views seen by mind's eye imperfectly. Now we will have nothing less than the tracings of nature itself, reflected on the plate.
Did I express my personality? I think that's quite unimportant because it's not people's selves but what they have to say about life that's important.
Of the 6,000 languages spoken on Earth right now, 3,000 aren't spoken by the children. In one generation, we're going to halve our cultural diversity.
I think if you don't love people and aren't fascinated by them, you'll never succeed as a portrait photographer, because your pictures will look cold.
I was growing up in the suburbs; I was one of eight kids. So I did have a community when I was younger, but all of my brothers and sisters were older.
Whatever emotions you're going through, you somehow seek out the people that are going through similar emotions or that maybe have something you need.
I'm just the opposite of a lot of photographers who want everything to be really, really sharp. And they're always, you know, stopping it down to F64.
What I want is to create a discussion about what is happening around the world and to provoke some debate with these pictures. Nothing more than this.
Patti [Smith] was my experiment, to be honest. And the film is what we got out of it. At the end of the day, I learned a lot about how to make a film.
I'm very old fashioned. I still believe in the image and the pictorial quality of the image. It seems that I'm still busy with a truth in photography.
In order to put meaning back into our lives, we should recognize illusions for what they are, and we should reach out and touch the fabric of reality.
I used to try to figure out precisely what I was seeing all the time, until I discovered that I didn't need to. If the thing is true, why there it is.
I wanted to be a scientist. I did a thesis on lions. But I realised photography can show things writing can't. Lions were my professor of photography.