Quotes about photography

A collection of quotes on the topic of photography, likeness, art, photograph.

Quotes about photography

“Photography is not only an art, it is an international language that everybody understands.”

NasserTone (1994) Nasser Ali Albahrani is a director, cinematographer, photographer, producer, & YouTuber, who was born on April 3…

Amasi Program, Sharjah TV Interview (March 1, 2016)

Ansel Adams photo
Elliott Erwitt photo
Berenice Abbott photo
Tony Benn photo
Ansel Adams photo
Agnes Mary Clerke photo
László Moholy-Nagy photo

“The photogram, image formation outside the camera is the real key to photography, it embodies the essence… that allows us to capture light on light sensitive material without the use of any camera.”

László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) Hungarian artist

Art of the 20th century, Part 1 by Karl Ruhrberg, Klaus Honnef, Manfred Schneckenburger, Ingo F. Walther, Christiane Fricke (2000) p. 627.

“I hate looking at photography books or illustrated magazines. This is not because of contempt. I’d rather look at contact sheets: that is where you can sense the individual.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Only Geometricians May Enter: Interview with Yves Bourde (1974), p. 62

Julian Barnes photo
Lorrie Moore photo

“I would never understand photography, the sneaky, murderous taxidermy of it.”

Lorrie Moore (1957) American writer

Source: Anagrams

“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever…it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”

Aaron Siskind (1903–1991) American photographer

Aaron Sussman, cited in: The Amateur Photographer's Handbook, (1973), p. vi
Sussman, Aaron. The Amateur Photographer's Handbook. Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1973.
Context: Photography is more than a means of recording the obvious. It is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever, whether it be a face or a flower, a place or a thing, a day or a moment. The camera is a perfect companion. It makes no demands, imposes no obligations. It becomes your notebook and your reference library, your microscope and your telescope. It sees what you are too lazy or too careless to notice, and it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.

Alfred Stieglitz photo

“Photography is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) American photographer

Alfred Stieglitz, as quoted in The Real Thing: Imitation and Authenticity in American Culture, 1880-1940, M. Orvell (1989). p. 220
Variant: There is a reality — so subtle that it becomes more real than reality. That's what I'm trying to get down in photography.

Edvard Munch photo
Roland Barthes photo
Jean-Luc Godard photo

“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.”

Jean-Luc Godard (1930) French-Swiss film director, screenwriter and film critic

Le Petit Soldat (film) (direction and screenplay, 1960).
[variation] Cinema is truth at twenty-four frames a second.

“We're free and easy. We're not very authoritative. We have no doctrine, no dogma. It is a community of mostly people who are interested in the arts, literature, photography, music.”

Irving Fiske (1908–1990) American writer

1984 interview, quoted in The Burlington Free Press (6 May 1990), p. 5 https://www.newspapers.com/newspage/201083677/

Robert Rauschenberg photo
Hélène Binet photo

“Photography is a very, very simple experience. It really is. You have the palette up there so it’s about you saying yes or no.”

Hélène Binet (1959) Swiss photographer

Source: Ten questions for photographer Hélène Binet http://uk.phaidon.com/agenda/photography/articles/2012/december/06/ten-questions-for-photographer-helene-binet/, Phaidon Press, 6 December 2012.

Arthur Schopenhauer photo
Tara Reid photo
Isidore Isou photo
Jean Baudrillard photo

“So-called "realist" photography does not capture the "what is." Instead, it is preoccupied with what should not be, like the reality of suffering for example.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

New millennium, Photography, or the Writing of Light, (2000)

Ward Cunningham photo
Robert Rauschenberg photo
Alfred Horsley Hinton photo

“Photography itself may err by inaccurately rendering the relative tones in Nature. Then we shall have to ask, What is " Tone "?…”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, How expression may be given to a picture, p. 34

Alfred Horsley Hinton photo
Auguste Rodin photo
Richard Long photo
Isa Genzken photo
Alfred Horsley Hinton photo
Alfred Horsley Hinton photo

“As a rule, in pictorial photography a long-focus lens will on the whole be most satisfactory.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, The use of the lens in pictorial work, p. 58

Alfred Stieglitz photo
TY Bello photo
Berenice Abbott photo
Eugène Delacroix photo
Susan Sontag photo
Berenice Abbott photo
Alfred Horsley Hinton photo
Aubrey Beardsley photo
Helmut Newton photo
Derren Brown photo
Alfred Stieglitz photo

“Photography as a fad is well-nigh on its last legs, thanks principally to the bicycle craze.”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) American photographer

Alfred Stieglitz (1887), in the American Annual of Photography 1897.

“T. V. has made going to the theatre seem pointless, photography has pretty much killed painting but graffiti has remained gloriously unspoilt by progress.”

Banksy pseudonymous England-based graffiti artist, political activist, and painter

Wall and Piece (2005)

Hélène Binet photo
Tony Abbott photo

“More than 100 years of photography at Manly Beach in my electorate does not suggest that sea levels have risen despite frequent reports from climate alarmists that this is imminent.”

Tony Abbott (1957) Australian politician

Quoted in "'I've learnt to speak my mind': 10 excerpts from Tony Abbott's climate change speech in London'" http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/ive-learnt-to-speak-my-mind-ten-excerpts-from-tony-abbotts-climate-change-speech-in-london-20171009-gyxk92.html, Sydney Morning Herald, October 10, 2017
2017

Saul Leiter photo
Berenice Abbott photo

“Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.”

Berenice Abbott (1898–1991) American photographer

"It Has to Walk Alone," Infinity magazine, 1951.

Philip Larkin photo
Gerhard Richter photo
Patrick Modiano photo
Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery photo

“Few speeches which have produced an electrical effect on an audience can bear the colorless photography of a printed record.”

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery (1847–1929) British politician

Life of Pitt (1891), reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Alfred Horsley Hinton photo

“Hence SELECTION in photography, or at least in landscape and some other branches of work, often takes the place of what in painting becomes voluntary COMPOSITION.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Methods - The practical application of means to end, p. 28

Alfred Horsley Hinton photo
William S. Burroughs photo
Edward Steichen photo

“Today, I am no longer concerned with photography as an art form. I believe it is potentially the best medium for explaining man to himself and his fellow man.”

Edward Steichen (1879–1973) American photographer, artist and curator

Edward Steichen (1967),, cited in: National Portrait Gallery (Smithsonian Institution), ‎Carolyn Kinder Carr, ‎National Portrait Gallery (Great Britain) (2003). Americans: paintings and photographs from the National Portrait Gallery, Washington, DC, Deel 3. p. 207

Jean Baudrillard photo
Don McCullin photo

“Photography for me is not looking, it's feeling. If you can't feel what you're looking at, then you're never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.”

Don McCullin (1935) artist

David Armstrong, Theo Farrell, Bice Maiguashca, Governance and resistance in world politics http://books.google.pl/books?id=Xs6V0PLaEiEC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false, Cambridge University Press, 2003, p. 68.

Alfred Stieglitz photo

“I am an American. Photography is my passion. The search for truth my obsession”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) American photographer

From Adams to Stieglitz' (1990)
Source: 'Alfred Stieglitz' Photo notes, August 1946, p. 65

Kage Baker photo
Susan Sontag photo
Walter Wick photo

“I had so many other interests at the time: drawing, tinkering, building, inventing, games, sports, climbing trees. It took me through high school, and then college to settle on photography. But a half-century later, I'm still staging my shots.”

Walter Wick (1953) American photographer and creator of children's books

My First Roll Of Film http://www.walterwick.com/blog/2016/3/2/my-first-roll-of-film-1 (March 2, 2016)

Susan Sontag photo
Alfred Stieglitz photo
Hélène Binet photo
Jacob Bronowski photo
Isa Genzken photo
Arlo Guthrie photo
Edward Steichen photo

“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.”

Edward Steichen (1879–1973) American photographer, artist and curator

Quoted in Time Magazine, "To Catch the Instant" http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,874339,00.html, 7 April 1961

Alfred Horsley Hinton photo

“…let it be remembered that as photography is our chosen medium, then if photography unaided will give us the effect we want there is no especial virtue in altering it.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Printing the picture and controlling its formation, p. 79

Willem de Sitter photo
Ansel Adams photo

“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 (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

"A Personal Credo" (1943), published in American Annual of Photography (1944), reprinted in Nathan Lyons, editor, Photographers on Photography (1966), reprinted in Vicki Goldberg, editor, Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present (1988)

Roman Vishniac photo

“The purpose of photography is the transmission of a visualized sector of life through the medium of the camera into a mental process that starts with the photographer's thinking about the subject he photographs and is continued in the mind of the spectator.”

Roman Vishniac (1897–1990) American photographer

Deschin, Jacob. "Nature as it is". New York Times (1857-Current file); Feb 3, 1952; Proquest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2002) pg. X14

Vito Acconci photo
Joseph Nechvatal photo
Susan Sontag photo

“Photography has become almost as widely practiced an amusement as sex and dancing.”

In Plato's Cave, p. 8 http://books.google.com/books?id=B8DktTyeRNkC&q=%22Photography+has+become+almost+as+widely+practiced+an+amusement+as+sex+and+dancing%22&pg=PA8#v=onepage
Previously published as Photography http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/1973/oct/18/photography/ in The New York Review of Books, 18 October 1973
On Photography (1977)

Helmut Newton photo

“Growing up, I was surrounded by Nazi imagery, like everybody in Germany, and for a boy obsessed with photography it left an indelible impression on me.”

Helmut Newton (1920–2004) German-Australian photographer

American Photo (January/February 2000), p. 90
Context: Growing up, I was surrounded by Nazi imagery, like everybody in Germany, and for a boy obsessed with photography it left an indelible impression on me. Later this influence was tempered by Brassaï and Dr. Erich Salomon. My love of photography at night started with m early experience of … the Brelin undergrund stations. Even today I love photographing by the light of street lamps or in the glare of my flash.

Laxmi Prasad Devkota photo
Laxmi Prasad Devkota photo

“The straight forward illustration of practicality cannot take the form of Art, not is photography any Art in my opinion.”

Laxmi Prasad Devkota (1909–1959) Nepali poet

कला र जीवन (Art and Life)
Art and Life
Context: I think human arts depend on the imaginative truths. The straight forward illustration of practicality cannot take the form of Art, not is photography any Art in my opinion.

Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma photo

“He had varied interests including photography, sports and motoring. He has won trophies as an amateur horse rider and has even played table hockey, tennis, football and polo.”

Uthradom Thirunal Marthanda Varma (1922–2013) Maharaja of Travancore

Sangeetha Seshagiri, in "Marthanda Varma, Titular Head of Travancore Royal Family, Passes Away (16 December 2013)"