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Quotes by Photographer
"I think maybe the rural influence in my life helped me in a sense, of knowing how to get close to people and talk to them and get my work done."
39
"But I wanted marriage for myself. I was not calculating about it. I wish I was more calculating."
39
"With photography, you zero in; you put a lot of energy into short moments, and then you go on to the next thing."
39
"I almost never set out to photograph a landscape, nor do I think of my camera as a means of recording a mountain or an animal unless I absolutely need a 'record shot'. My first thought is always of light."
39
"I just hope I can live long enough to see the fame."
39
"What I learned from Lennon was something that did stay with me my whole career, which is to be very straightforward. I actually love talking about taking pictures, and I think that helps everyone."
39
"I did grow up next door to Steve McQueen, who was a very famous movie star at the time, but as a kid it didn't impress me. We always had great fun with him. He would take us out on Sundays on his motorcycles, riding around in the desert; he was like a second father."
39
"In a war, you must hate somebody or love somebody; you must have a position or you cannot stand what goes on."
39
"When I have sex with someone I forget who I am. For a minute I even forget I'm human. It's the same thing when I'm behind a camera. I forget I exist."
39
"It's hard to watch something go on and be talking at the same time."
39
"I like to feel that all my best photographs had strong personal visions and that a photograph that doesn't have a personal vision or doesn't communicate emotion fails."
39
"If I didn't have my camera to remind me constantly, I am here to do this, I would eventually have slipped away, I think. I would have forgotten my reason to exist."
39
"You see, I became kind of a drop-out in science after I came back to America."
39
"If there is a single quality that is shared by all great men, it is vanity."
39
"To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things."
39
"I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence."
39
"I see things like they've never been seen before. Art is an accurate statement of the time in which it is made."
39
"I wish that all of nature's magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed."
39
"I like photographs which leave something to the imagination."
39
"I have always felt that my work is religious, not sacrilegious."
39
"Just advertising departments with legs and high heels."
38
"I had to go. A spirit in my feet said 'Go,' and I went."
38
"I was an economics major, which I enjoyed because I had a good business sense."
38
"When you are on assignment, film is the least expensive thing in a very practical sense. Your time, the person's time, turns out to be the most valuable thing."
38
"Photography is a major force in explaining man to man."
38
"I wasn't looking for another marriage. I had been married before. He is a nice man - a geologist, an Ernest Hemingway type. But Paul and I married because of convention."
38
"I played around with the flowers and the lighting, so that was a good way to educate myself."
38
"These people live again in print as intensely as when their images were captured on old dry plates of sixty years ago... I am walking in their alleys, standing in their rooms and sheds and workshops, looking in and out of their windows. Any they in turn seem to be aware of me."
38
"Some people say to me, Isn't it too bad that people discovered you so late? I never thought that."
38
"Actually, I'm not all that interested in the subject of photography. Once the picture is in the box, I'm not all that interested in what happens next. Hunters, after all, aren't cooks."
38
"Today, I'm very careful not to mention very specific locations when I write or give captions."
38
"Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory."
38
"If slaughterhouses had glass walls the whole world would be vegetarian."
38
"All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth."
38
"When you are younger, the camera is like a friend and you can go places and feel like you're with someone, like you have a companion."
38
"Technically, I have not changed very much. Ask my assistants. They'll tell you, I am the easiest photographer to work with. I don't have heavy equipment. I work out of one bag."
Work,
38
"What I end up shooting is the situation. I shoot the composition and my subject is going to help the composition or not."
38
"I hope to stay unemployed as a war photographer till the end of my life."
37
"When I first became interested in photography, I thought it was the whole cheese. My idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don't give a hoot in hell about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself."
37
"Chance is the one thing you can't buy. You have to pay for it and you have to pay for it with your life, spending a lot of time, you pay for it with time, not the wasting of time but the spending of time."
37
"I was extravagant in the matter of cameras - anything photographic - I had to have the best. But that was to further my work. In most things I have gone along with the plainest - or without."
Work,
37
"I always enjoyed art history because, growing up in California, my exposure was limited, and it was a new experience. To learn the history of art opened up certain things to me, made me see. It intrigued me."
37
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