quotations about photography
When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.
ROBERT FRANK
"Winners of the Young Photographers Contest", Life Magazine, November 26, 1951
Photography is fun, and digital photography is more fun!
STEVEN GREENBERG
Complete Idiot's Guide to Digital Photography
The term 'photographer' is changing.... As a result, photos are less markers of memories than they are Web-browser bookmarks for our lives. And, just as with bookmarks, after a few months it becomes hard to find photos or even to navigate back to the points worth remembering. Google made hoarding bookmarks futile. Today we think of something, and then we Google it. Photos are evolving along the same path as well.
OM MALIK
"In the Future, We Will Photograph Everything and Look at Nothing", The New Yorker, April 4, 2016
You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.
ANSEL ADAMS
attributed, The Art of Understanding Art
There is a reality -- so subtle that it becomes more real than reality. That's what I'm trying to get down in photography.
ALFRED STIEGLITZ
attributed, The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture
Photography was an interesting foil to the kind of veracity that painting is supposed to express.
MARSDEN HARTLEY
Adventures in the Arts
Mastering the technical details that make up the craft of photography is only the beginning. To make photographs that communicate your ideas or feelings, you will also have to learn the differences between human visual perception and the way photographs represent reality.
BRUCE WARREN
Photography
Photography has become almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex and dancing -- which means that, like every mass art form, photography is not practiced by most people as an art. It is mainly a social rite, a defense against anxiety, and a tool of power.
SUSAN SONTAG
On Photography
In photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the ordinary.
DAVID BAILEY
interview, The Face, December 1984
There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.
ANSEL ADAMS
attributed, The Everything Digital Photography Book
To the complaint 'There are no people in these photographs,' I respond, There are always two people, the photographer and the viewer.
ANSEL ADAMS
attributed, Seizing the Light: A Social History of Photography
When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.
ALFRED EISENSTAEDT
Eisenstaedt on Eisenstaedt: A Self-portrait