PHOTOGRAPHY QUOTES
quotations about photography
A picture is a secret about a secret, the more it tells you the less you know.
DIANE ARBUS
Diane Arbus: Revelations
A photograph acquires something of the dignity which it ordinarily lacks when it ceases to be a reproduction of reality and shows us things that no longer exist.
MARCEL PROUST
Within a Budding Grove
All the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an advantage from his absence.
ANDRÉ BAZIN
What Is Cinema?
One of the keys to a good photo is to keep everyone happy on set and plan all your technicalities in advance, so you don't end up adjusting lights for hours. Talking with your team and model while doing a setup/light adjustment is also a good way to keep the connection going between everyone. If for any reason you lose technical control, don't bring the people on set into detailed explanation, just inform them that you are making an adjustment to get an even better outcome, and keep the good vibes on. Not doing so might make them lose trust in you and your professionalism. Kill the panic. Nip it in the bud.
EMMA GRIGORYAN
"Panic on Set: Does It Help Your Photography and How to Deal With It", Fstoppers, April 28, 2016
Photography has freed the plastic arts from their obsession with likeness.
ANDRÉ BAZIN
What Is Cinema?
It is confusing to come across a youthful photograph of some one known in a rounded maturity and gaze with a shock upon a fiery, wiry, eagle-eyed stranger.
F. SCOTT FITZGERALD
Tender Is the Night
Photography, because it stops the flow of life, is always flirting with death.
JOHN BERGER
Selected Essays of John Berger
Photography as a fad is well-nigh on its last legs, thanks principally to the bicycle craze.
ALFRED STIEGLITZ
American Annual of Photography, 1897
Photographs bear witness to a human choice being exercised in a given situation. A photograph is a result of the photographer's decision that it is worth recording that this particular event or this particular object has been seen. If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.
JOHN BERGER
Selected Essays and Articles
Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.
HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON
attributed, Click You!
Photography does not create eternity, as art does; it embalms time, rescuing it simply from its proper corruption.
ANDRÉ BAZIN
What Is Cinema?
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.
JOHN BERGER
Another Way of Telling
Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos.
SUSAN SONTAG
On Photography
A picture was a motionless record of motion. An arrested representation of life. A picture was the kiss of death pretending to possess immutability.
IVAN KLIMA
Waiting for the Dark, Waiting for the Light
Photography is about capturing souls not smiles.
DRAGAN TAPSHANOV
attributed, Pinterest
Photographs are believed more than words; thus they can be used persuasively to show people who have never taken the trouble to look what is there. They can point out beauties and relationships not previously believed or suspected to exist.
ELIOT PORTER
attributed, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics
I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything.
JOHN STEINBECK
Steinbeck: A Life in Letters
My photographs don't do me justice -- they just look like me.
PHYLLIS DILLER
attributed, Put Your House on a Diet
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.
ANSEL ADAMS
"A Personal Credo", American Annual of Photography, 1944
The photographer is like the cod which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
"George Bernard Shaw on Coburn's Photography", British Journal of Photography, 1906