Best Documentary Photography Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings

“For me, documentary photography has always come with great responsibility. Not just to tell the story honestly and with empathy, but also to make sure the right people hear it. When you photograph somebody who is in pain or discomfort, they trust you to make sure the images will act as their advocate.”

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Author:Giles Duley

“I may be wrong, but the essential illustrative nature of most documentary photography, and the worship of the object per se, in our best nature photography, is not enough to satisfy the man of today, compounded as he is of Christ, Freud, and Marx.”

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Author:Aaron Siskind

“Documentary photography is becoming more illustrative as people become more familiar with photography’s limitations and vulnerabilities. Reality has always been interpreted through layers of manipulation, abstraction, and intervention. But now, it is very much on the surface. I like this honesty about its dishonesty. Every photograph has many truths and none. Photographs are ambiguous, no matter how seemingly scientific they appear to be. They are always subject to an uncontrollable context. This is a tired statement, but worth repeating.”

“Some of my pictures are poem-like in the sense that they are very condensed, haiku-lik. There are others that, if they were poetry, would be more like Ezra Pound. There is a lot of information in most of my pictures, but not the kind of information you see in documentary photography. There is emotional information in my photographs.”

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Author:Sally Mann

“Many people in this world do jobs that are dangerous and where their life is at risk and they feel that there is some kind of value to their job I guess that's how I feel about what I do. There is a social function to documentary photography that is very important and it requires people to take risks.”

People World Feels Kind Important Jobs Life Is Values Social Risk Dangerous This World Photography Function Documentaries Documentary Photography

Author:James Nachtwey

“The dismal half-baked images of the average "reportage" and "documentary" photography are self dammning... the slick manner, the slightly obscure significance, the esoteric fear of simple beauty for its own sake - I am deeply concerned with these manifestations of decay. Gene Smith's work validates my most vigorous convictions that if the documentary photographs is to be truly effective it must contain elements of art, intensity, fine craft and spirituality. All these his work contains and we may turn to his work with gratitude, appreciation and great respect.”

“I think photojournalism is documentary photography with a purpose.”

Thinking Purpose Photography Documentaries Photojournalism Documentary Photography

Author:W. Eugene Smith

“[Documentary photography] is unwittingly literary, because it is nothing other than an observation of contemporary life apprehended at the right moment by an artist capable of seizing it. (1928)”

Moments Artist Photography Capable Contemporary Observation Documentaries Right Moment Seizing Contemporary Life Documentary Photography

Author:Pierre Mac Orlan

“Documentary photography has amassed mountains of evidence. And yet... the genre has simultaneously contributed much to spectacle, to retinal excitation, to voyeurism, to terror, envy and nostalgia, and only a little to the critical understanding of the social world.”

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Book:Dismal science: photo works, 1972-1996

Source: Dismal science: photo works, 1972-1996

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

“While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.”

“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”

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Book:Photographs of a Lifetime

Source: Photographs of a Lifetime

“If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough.”

Source: Robert Capa: cuadernos de guerra en España (1936-1939).

“One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind.”

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Book:Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field

Source: Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field

“A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.”

Life Photography Photograph Documentaries Factual Documentary Photography

Book:Photographs of a Lifetime

Source: Photographs of a Lifetime

“I don't know that there were any rules for documentary photography. As a matter of fact, I don't think the term was even very precise. So as far as I'm concerned, the kind of photography I did in the FSA was the kind of photography I still do today, because it is based on passionate concern for the human condition. That is the basis of all the work that I do.”

“To me documentary photography means making a picture so that the viewer doesn’t think about the man who made the picture. At its esthetic core is very old tradition in art: naturalism. And its purpose is to document all facets of social relationships.”

“I have tried to bring about better communication between people. I believe that humanitarian photography is like economics. Economy is a kind of sociology, as is documentary photography.”

People Believe Kind I Believe Economy Communication Photography Economics Photographer Humanitarian Documentaries Sociology Documentary Photography

Author:Sebastiao Salgado

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

Documentary Photography Quotes

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Documentary Photography Quotes