Christopher Isherwood Quotes

The camera photographs what's there.

My pictures are my eyes. I photograph what I see - and what I want to see.

Photography helps people to see.

To be able to take my pictures, I have to look, all the time, at the people and places I care about.

To see life. To see the world. To watch the faces of the poor, and the gestures of the proud. To see strange things. Machines, armies, multitudes, and shadows in the jungle. To see, and to take pleasure in seeing. To see and be instructed. To see and be amazed. (Describing the powers of photography; written for the launch of LIFE Magazine, 1936.)

The camera is a mirror with a memory, but it cannot think.

This thing called the camera, that takes everything in equally, taught me a lot about how to see.

Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees.

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

I think I got an Instamatic camera when I was 8 years old, and ever since then, I've liked to record things. I don't know why. Maybe it's just to kind of try to leave some kind of record behind.

The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.

I believe in living with the camera, and not using the camera.

I liked the idea of being a photographer, just that you take this one picture of this one thing that'll never happen again - it's a bit weird when you think about it.

Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts.

There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described. I photograph to see what something will look like photographed.

My inspiration has always been photography's ability to stop time and reveal what the naked eye cannot see.

I don't take the camera out with me. My eyes are the camera for me every day.

The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.

The camera is for us a tool, not a pretty mechanical toy ... people think far too much about techniques and not enough about seeing.

And that desire-the strong desire to take pictures-is important. It borders on a need, based on a habit: the habit of seeing. Whether working or not, photographers are looking, seeing, and thinking about what they see, a habit that is both a pleasure and a problem, for we seldom capture in a single photograph the full expression of what we see and feel. It is the hope that we might express ourselves fully-and the evidence that other photographers have done so-that keep us taking pictures.

The camera is the eye of history.

Photography has definitely been my favorite way to remember things. At least for me that’s how my brain processes things, of memories or moments - if I take a picture of it I can remember so many more details. I think it’s about choosing the exact picture in my head that signifies or symbolizes a moment - almost as if you’re using film. It’s almost archaic.

The camera creates a magical transformation. It's not enough to exist; we must chronicle that existence. ... Narrative- and image-making creatures like humans don't feel any experience is complete unless it's recorded.

One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind. To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.