Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.
The minute you point a camera at something, you are manipulating the image, because you are cropping out whatever is to the left and right of it. The minute you put a light on someone, you are manipulating the image.
When you grow up your mother says, 'Wear rubbers or you'll catch cold.' When you become an adult you discover that you have the right not to wear rubbers and to see if you catch cold or not. It's something like that.
To the oft-asked question, What camera or lens do you use? I can only reply I couldn't tell to save my soul - it is enough for me to know that I have something that will make pictures and that it is in working order.
You know, I really don't think you learn from teachers. You learn from work. I think what you learn, really, is how to be- you have to be your own toughest critic, and you only learn that from work, from seeing work.
Well, it was strange, because the phone rang and a teaching job turned up that sounded interesting. And I always did my own work. The Animals and a lot of Public Relations were done while I was doing commercial work.
I don't pretend to make my photographs speak the truth of what Mexico is all about. But in its villages I can feel the way culture is changing, and it's fascinating to live through it and try to capture it on camera.
Do not be afraid of mistakes. They will be with you always,every time you put a camera to your eye. [If you] shoot safe, and don't at least occasionally court disaster, you are not trying. Time to hang up the camera.
I never photograph anything I don't believe in. If I love working with death, it's because even in death I find this power of reality that no sculptor or painter could recreate, not even a Michelangelo or a Da Vinci.
I want to make photographs whose very ambiguity provokes thought, rather than cuts it off prematurely. I want to make pictures that work on a more mysterious level, that approach the truth by a more circuitous route.
The simplicity of photography lies in the fact that it is very easy to make a picture. The staggering complexity of it lies in the fact that a thousand other pictures of the same subject would have been equally easy.
If I give someone a horsetail he will have no difficulty making a photographic enlargement of it - anyone can do that. But to observe it, to notice and discover its forms, is something that only a few are capable of.
I am trying to capture the women I photograph at their happiest. That is when they look their most beautiful. But I do understand that you have to make somebody feel completely comfortable in order to bring that out.
I realized all of the possibilities that could exist for me with my camera: all of the images that I could capture, all of the lives I could enter, all of the people I could meet and how much I could learn from them.
I had a growing feeling that most of the best art of the world in painting and sculpture had been done, and that this newest form [photography] was more related to the progress and tempo of modern science of the eye.
My feeling is that for years now it has taken a much too big part in how women are being visually defined today. Heartless retouching should not be the chosen tool to represent women in the beginning of this century.
Just having the camera, being able to pull back from situations and be an observer, it saved my life... I realised I could find these intimate moments and that people trusted me. That, basically, my camera was magic.
Most of my photographs were taken on the spur of the moment, very quickly, just as they occurred. All attention focuses on the specific instant, almost too good to be true, which can only vanish in the following one.
When I make a photograph I want it to be an altogether new object, complete and self-contained, whose basic condition is order (unlike the world of events and actions whose permanent condition is change and disorder).
If I was a male, I had the right to, when I stepped out the door, take off my shirt. It's not right for the state to ask me to be both male and female. A choice needs to be made. They cannot hold me to both standards.
I think I have been fashioned by the fickle weather of Britain that it is - it's forever changing. There's no kind of constant sun or dry weather or freezing weather, and I'm always having to change and adapt to that.
She was the best model because she not only had perfect facial features, but a great body and wasn't ashamed to show it. It was impossible to take a bad photo of her. Bettie Page was always ready for the camera's eye.
I'm not by nature a terribly intuitive person; I need to build a situation in which I will behave more intuitively, and that has really changed the life of my work - I found a way to trick myself into being intuitive.
When you stop doing something, it doesn't mean you are rejecting the previous work. That's the mistake; it's not rejecting it, it's saying, 'I have exploited it enough now and I wish to take a look at another corner.'
You can't change people's minds, we are not God. We can do our best to do what we do, whatever job we have to bring sort of goodness out there. But we can't change people. As an artist what I can do is to communicate!
Today a lot of things are so celebrity-oriented; it's only because it's celebrity and the photograph is lost. To me it's important to have an image that is a photograph first, not about necessarily who that person is.
I was surprised that each expert cared for different images, and had varied suggestions for how to continue my work. If each expert had been my teacher, I would have pursued four different directions, and lost my way.
The social aspect of blogging is just as important as the content, so to borrow a phrase from the 1960s: the medium is the message. And my personal experience shows me that the potential of this medium is extra large.
For me, every photograph is a portrait; the clothes are just a vehicle for what I want to say. You're photographing a relationship with the person you're shooting; there's an exchange, and that's what that picture is.
I believe that the medium of photography prevails entirely as an act of faith in the souls of those who love and practice it. And so every photograph becomes another subtle variation on the theme of the medium itself.
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.
I think that the friendship that women share is so powerful. In fact, there's nothing quite like it. People talk about mother-child bonds, but I would argue that female friendship bond is also in a league unto its own.
When I’m working with materials it’s not just the leaf or the stone, it’s the processes that are behind them that are important. That’s what I’m trying to understand, not a single isolated object but nature as a whole.
I have worked with this red all over the world - in Japan, California, France, Britain, Australia - a vein running round the earth. It has taught me about the flow, energy and life that connects one place with another.
I went to school at the San Francisco Art Institute, thinking I was going to become an art teacher. Within the first six months I was there, I was told that I couldn't be an art teacher unless I became an artist first.
For me, the music of the Beatles then was serious and very, very serious art. So I couldn't take a picture of John laughing his head off or pulling funny faces because he was a serious artist, even when he was only 20.
What attracts the photographer is precisely the chance to penetrate inside phenomena, to uncover forms... He pursues them into their last refuges and surprises them at their most positive, their most material and true.
It is a sign of a dull nature to occupy oneself deeply in matters that concern the body; for instance, to be over much occupied about exercise, about eating and drinking, about easing oneself, about sexual intercourse.
Michael [Jackson] had paintings of himself at Neverland depicting himself as a knight and surrounded by cherubs and angels. People might think he's an egomaniac, but he's not. It's because the world turned against him.
Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.
In the simplest sentence, I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed. Basically, that's why I photograph, in the simplest language. That's the beginning of it and then we get to play the games.
A lot of people have done that over the years. Many of the agencies today were started by photographers. It's a normal progression. It wasn't some crazy idea, it was just, "Can we start our own agency? Can we do this?"
The basic material of photographs is not intrinsically beautiful. It's not like ivory or tapestry or bronze or oil on canvas. You're not supposed to look at the thing, you're supposed to look through it. It's a window.
The changes taking place in this part of Europe are enormous and very rapid. One world is disappearing. I am trying to photograph what's left. I have always been drawn to what is ending, what will soon no longer exist.
I don't think you can develop or learn a way of seeing or a point of view. A way of seeing is who you are, how you think and how you create images. It is something that is inside of you. It's how you look at the world.
I feel like if I started to use it [camera] that way, it would be like a sin almost. I never show people ugly pictures I take of them. I usually destroy them. So even if I like it, and they don't, it doesn't get shown.
When I was working with Robert Frank, he told me that there was absolutely no relationship between cinema and photography. I challenge that. Surely what you know as a photographer must impact how you set up your shots.
Dogs have given us their absolute all. We are the center of their universe. We are the focus of their love and faith and trust. They serve us in return for scraps. It is without a doubt the best deal man has ever made.
I like festivals of all kinds: in 1969, I made a film about the first Pan-African festival in Algiers, which celebrated the countries that had been liberated 10 years earlier. There was a tremendous feeling of kinship.
A photocopier is a camera in its own right. I was fortunate to grow up in the time and culture that I did. I was allowed to develop an awareness that the art that really moves me is actually based on an original image.