Quotessence
Home / Topics / Photography Quotes

Photography Quotes

Browse 3249 quotes about Photography.

Related topics

ArtIfsThinkingPeopleCamerasWorldWayLooksKnowsSubjectsMomentsPaintingPhotography By PhotographersArtistWantInspirational PhotographyMediumsIdeasLightMeanEyeKindTryingRealityUseImportantFilmMadeFirstsFeelsFormGreat PhotographyStillsDoeGivingHas BeensShouldMatterRealSeeingNeedsWellsMenPersonsProcessFactsHumansBelieveYearsInspirationalMayVisionCamera And PhotographyI CanLittlesInterestShowsDifferentSometimesMindWantedInspiring PhotographyObjectsRecordsInterestingSeemsTwoUsedPortraitsSaidWritingArt PhotographyColorQualityFeelingsLyingPainterTodayVisualsLanguageReasonCreativityDoneTakenWholeArt IsLongEndsEnoughExpressionPrintBeautifulCaptureHappensLandscape PhotographyWould BeCreativeLandscapeLensesSpacemore

Photography Quotes

“Look at the things around you, the immediate world around you. If you are alive, it will mean something to you, and if you care enough about photography, and if you know how to use it, you will want to photograph that meaningness. If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own, you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph.”

PeopleIfsKnowsWorldWantLooksMeanEnoughUseCareCommonVisionKnow HowAliveAchievePhotographyPhotographWorthlessIf You CarePictorial
Author:Paul Strand
Create image

“Do you know what will soon be the ultimate in truth? - photography, once it begins to reproduce colors, and that won't be long in coming. And yet you want an intelligent man to sweat for months so as to give the illusion he can do something as well as an ingenious little machine can!”

KnowsMenWantGivingWellsLittlesLongCan DoColorMonthsPhotographyIllusionMachinesUltimateIntelligentDo You KnowSweatIngeniousCan Do SomethingIntelligent Man
Book:The writings of a savage
Create image

“Photography is unlike any other art form. In the other arts there is always a continuous interplay between the artist and his art. He has the painting or sculpture before him. What we have tried to do is to provide a medium for "artistic expression" to anyone with only a reasonable amount of time. By giving him a camera system with which he need only control his selection of focus, composition and lighting, we free him to select the moment and to criticize immediately what he has done. We enable him to see what else he wants to do on the basis of what he has just learned.”

WantNeedsGivingArtDoneMomentsFormArtistFocusPaintingExpressionAmountPhotographyBasesCamerasMediumsArtisticReasonableCriticizeCompositionSelectionSculptureSelectLightingArtistic Expression
Author:Edwin Land
Create image

“I didn't want to be criticized for taking low-quality photographs, so I tried to reach the best, highest quality of photography and then to combine this with a conceptual art practice. But thinking back, that was the wrong decision [laughs]. Developing a low-quality aesthetic is a sign of serious fine art-I still see this.”

ThinkingWantArtStillsDecisionQualityPracticeLaughingSeriousFinePhotographyHighestLowsPhotographerPhotographDevelopingAestheticFine ArtsWrong DecisionConceptual Art
Author:Hiroshi Sugimoto
Create image

“I'm afraid my closely guarded solitude causes some hurt feelings now and then. But how to explain, without wounding someone, that you want to be wholly in the world you are writing about, that it would take two days to get the visitor's voice out of the house so that you could listen to your own characters again?”

WorldWantWritingTwoCharacterFeelingsHouseCausesVoiceHurtSolitudePhotographyNow And ThenVisitorsHurt FeelingsTwo DaysGuarded
Book:Portrait of Myself
Create image

“To speak technically photography is the art of writing with light. But if I want to think about it more philosophically, I can say that photography is the art of writing with time. When you capture an image you capture not only a piece of space, you also capture a piece of time. So you have this piece of specific time in your square or rectangle. In that sense I find that photography has more to do with time than with light.”

IfsThinkingWantWritingArtI CanLightSpeakSpacePiecesPhotographyPhotographCaptureSquaresArt Of WritingRectangles
Author:Gerardo Suter
Create image

“I do not want [photography] explained to me in terms of... formulas, learned, but so hopelessly unsatisfying. I do not want my butterfly stuck on a pin and put in a glass case. I want to see the sunlight on its wings as it flits from flower to flower and I don't care a rap what its Latin name may be.”

WantMayCareNamesTermCasesFlowerPhotographyWingsGlassesDon't CareRapStuckI Don't CareLatinFormulasButterflySunlightPins
Book:The Making of an American
Create image

“... the thing that's happening today vis-á-vis computer imaging, vis-á-vis alteration, is that it no longer needs to be based on the real at all. I don't want to get into jargon - let's just say that photography to me no longer pertains to the rhetoric of realism; it pertains more perhaps to the rhetoric of the unreal rather than the real or of course the hyperreal.”

WantNeedsRealTodayCoursesComputerPhotographyHappeningsRealismRhetoricUnrealJargonAlterationsImaging
Author:Barbara Kruger
Create image

“Fine-art photography is a very small world associated with galleries, museums, and university art programs. It's not like rock music; the products of this world have never been widely seen because the artists are often exploring things that are not already coded in general consciousness. It's not that photographers don't want to be famous, it's just that very few of the views from the edges of culture make the mainstream. Ansel Adams was an exception.”

WorldWantArtArtistCultureViewsConsciousnessRocksThis WorldProductsFinePhotographyProgramPhotographerUniversityEdgesExceptionMuseumsMainstreamExploringGalleryFine ArtsRock MusicSmall WorldArt Photography
Author:Mark Klett
Create image

“In the last workshop I taught, a woman flew in from Thailand. She's a medical doctor in Bangkok. I asked her in her one-on-one session where she wanted photography to be in her life.Did she want a second career? Was it about earning money? Or was it art? And she said "None of those. I want photography to be serious in my life." It would be like someone wanting music, like piano playing, to be a richer, deeper, and maybe even harder experience.”

WantArtSaidWould BeWantedLastsCareersTaughtSeriousPhotographyDoctorsHarderDeeperMedicalPianoEarningSessionFlewWorkshopsOne On OneThailandEarning MoneyPiano PlayingBangkokMedical Doctor
Author:Sam Abell
Create image

“The element of discovery is very important. I don't repeat myself well. I want and need that stimulus of walking forward from one new world to another. There is something demoralizing about going back to a place to retake pictures. You can no longer see your subjects in a fresh eye; you keep comparing them with the pictures you hold in your memory. [The] world was full of discoveries waiting to be made...(as a photographer) I could share the things I saw and learned...you would react to something all others might walk by.”

WorldWantNeedsWellsMadeImportantMightEyeWaitingMemoriesWalksSawsShareSubjectsWalkingElementsPhotographyDiscoveryPhotographerCompareRepeatsNew WorldStimulusOur MemoriesWants And NeedsDemoralizingWalking Forward
Author:Margaret Bourke-White
Create image

“A good print is really essential. I want to take strong documentary photographs that are as good technically as any of the best technical photographs, and as creative as any of the best fine-art photographs. [...] I don't want to just be a photo essayist; I'm more interested in single images...ones that I feel are good enough to stand on their own.”

WantFeelsArtEnoughStrongCreativeFineEssentialsPhotographyPhotographerPhotographPrintGood EnoughDocumentariesFine ArtsEssayists
Author:Mary Ellen Mark
Create image

“If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, I want to come to your house and have you talk to me and tell me the story of your life. I mean people are going to say, You're crazy. Plus they're going to keep mighty guarded. But the camera is a kind of license. A lot of people, they want to be paid that much attention and that's a reasonable kind of attention to be paid.”

PeopleIfsWantKindMeanHardStoriesWould BeHouseAttentionCrazyPhotographyPaidCamerasPhotographerCuriousReasonablePlusLicenseTalk To MeGuardedMean People
Author:Diane Arbus
Create image

“Part of the reason that these attempts at explanation fail, I think, is that photographers, like all artists, choose their medium because it allows them the most fully truthful expression of their vision... as Robert Frost told a person who asked him what one of his poems meant, 'You want me to say it worse?'”

ThinkingWantPersonsReasonArtistVisionFailingExpressionPhotographyPhotographerMediumsExplanationWant MeTruthfulFrostYou Want Me
Book:Why People Photograph: Selected Essays and Reviews
Create image