Ruth Bernhard Quotes

Photography gives you the opportunity to use your sensibility and everything you are to say something about and be part of the world around you. In this way, you might discover who you are, and with a little luck, you might discover something much larger than yourself.

I was always painting when I was a kid. But then when I handled a camera when I was 17, that was it for me. I loved photography. I would work 4 or 5 hours a day. It was like a calling.

I'm happiest when in front of the camera, and I didn't know it until I got up there.

I have discovered photography. Now I can kill myself. I have nothing else to learn.

You can't make a great musician or a great photographer if the magic isn't there.

I enjoy photographing. It's always interesting, so I can't say one thing is more fun than another. Everything has it's own difficulties.

Photography's like this baby that needs to be fed all the time. It's always hungry.

I took a workshop from him a few months after that. That experience changed my whole approach to photography. At that workshop in Yosemite in 1973 I decided I wanted to try and see if I could pursue this for myself, and I'm still trying.

I travel, I read, I write, I have other lives. But when I have a camera, I know that's my country, my island.

Some guys can run fast, some guys can sing, I found I could take photographs that people were interested in.

Being a photographer is like listening to music. If you have a camera, by just living your life you're bound to find some things that are worth taking a picture of. You don't have to be an audiophile to have taste in music. It happens through osmosis.

Everyone is born a genius, but the process of living de-geniuses them.

I went to film school at UT Austin. I learned a lot, and that school's good for puking up all your bad movies early and quick. But ultimately, no one can teach you to be an artist.

I've learned to create a palette, a vocabulary of ways to take pictures.

I think if you're artistic in any way, you're probably born with it. I guess it's a talent that can be learned here and there, but I think the instinct to tell a story or to create something happens maybe in the womb.

I don't know why my pictures come out looking so good. I just don't get it.

What it all boils down to for me is having the enthusiasm to do something for enjoyment and being stimulated by what's around you. That's what photography does for me.

It was 1966 by the time I started taking pictures seriously and books, newspapers and magazines of the time were full of great pictures that helped to inspire me.

Natural ability without education has more often raised a man to glory and virtue than education without natural ability.

I saw that my camera gave me a sense of connection with others that I never had before. It allowed me to enter lives, satisfying a curiosity that was always there but that was never explored before.

I've always been shy and that's partly why I chose a life behind the lens. I like people to look at my work and hopefully it speaks for itself.

I've been taking photographs since I was a teenager, and fashion has taught me a lot more about photography. It's definitely inspired me.

I'm still learning and I'm still growing as a photographer.

Sometimes I'm amazed by how much you can do as a photographer.

I gravitated toward photography. That's what I really did well.