Martin Parr Quotes

It doesn't matter if you use a box camera or you use a Leica; the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing.

The photographer's art is a continuous discovery which requires patience and time.

I'm not a politician or a scholar or political historian. I'm just a photographer who's trying to capture a spirit. It's not an intellectual process; it's an intuitive process.

'Humans of New York' wasn't the result of a fully finished idea that I thought of and then executed; it was an evolution. There were hundreds of tiny evolutions that came from me loving photography.

One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are.

The subject gives you the best idea of how to make a photograph. So I just wait for something to happen.

The camera is a remarkable instrument. Saturate yourself with your subject, and the camera will all but take you by the hand and point the way.

Pictures you have taken have an influence on those that you are going to make. That's life!

People go, 'What do you want to do?' What do you want to do? What are you feeling? Going into a shoot not fully knowing what I want to do—that excitement, that thing that happens, is just so powerful and makes such great pictures.

I think a lot of the time these days people are so concerned about having the right camera and the right film and the right lenses and all the special effects that go along with it, even the computer, that they're missing the key element.

I start a picture and I finish it.

No matter how many helicopters there are, when it comes down to it there is the camera and you.

Some people would say my paintings show a future world and maybe they do, but I paint from reality. I put several things and ideas together, and perhaps, when I have finished, it could show the future.

All painters are interested in photography to a certain extent.

The beauty of women was the first expression of my photography.

I have to go with what the painting says to me. The painting is always informing me. I'm its servant; it's not mine. I'm doing what it wants.

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 never look at other people's work. My mind has to be completely focused on my own illusions.

I carry a notebook full of sketches of pictures I want to take - they are really scruffy sketches, but at least I am going out there with a clear objective.

I have a desire to create more film, more beauty, more art, more love, but I don't feel desperate. It's not about creating or building a career.

I told myself, 'When I grow up, I want to make pictures that can inspire and nourish people.' Immediately, when I was 10, I started photographing nature. I built a darkroom. My first really good darkroom, not just down in the cellar, was when I was 14.

My memory of those places is better than my pictures. That's why I get much more satisfaction out of shooting thematic work that has to do with an idea that I'm searching for, or searching to express.

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 look at my pictures, and I think, 'Well, how did I do that?'

One of these days, I'm going to publish a book of all the pictures I did not take. It is going to be a huge hit.