Ben Shahn Quotes

All I'm doing is photographing. When I was working on The Animals, I was working on a lot of other things too. I kept going to the zoo because things were going on in certain pictures. It wasn't a project.

Photography started as a means of getting reference material for my paintings of nature subjects.

I'm not used to not having enough time to live with the songs. Usually, if I write something, I live with it for a little while.

Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.

Since 1970, I've been using text and ephemera as well as photographs in order to tell stories of one kind or another. There's a thread that runs through all the work that is to do with bearing witness. The photographs are about asking questions, though, not answering them.

My technique of working is I go around with my iPhone and with my sketchbook. I take thousands and thousands and thousands of iPhone photos. I also draw from life. I can draw really, really, really fast. It's a way that I build a rapport with people.

I really loved taking photos when I was younger. I think my love for photography sparked my love for creating the visuals to support my music.

I've always been super into photography and the visuals that support my music.

As a photographer, I don't really have a view of the world in general. Someone taking pictures for 'National Geographic' might. Each of us works to our full capacity when we're in the midst of a shoot. Each of us finds our own level of intensity, and that's the fun of it.

I seem to be always returning to photography in my poetry. I guess you could say that I'm documenting the personal history and relationship I have with photography.

The camera is a kind of license.

I take photos, I used to make films, I journal incessantly, and I really value the documentation of life. Because it's almost like you are making something special by wanting to make it exist in an object - on paper or even just in the computer - making these recordings, making this music.

I'm always taking behind-the-scenes photos and stuff.

There's a lot of research and time that goes into my shoots. I spend weeks on them, even for one picture.

When I write, I imagine scenes. I write things down. I take photographs. I do some casting. I rewrite. It's a permanent making or remaking.

Photography led me to experiment in graphic work and, actually, painting.

I kind of grew up with a camera in my hand.

I've always thought photography is not so much of an art form but a way of communicating and passing on information.

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

I was a photographer. That's how I began my career, behind the camera.

I always liked taking photographs.

I got into photography when my kids were little, and I continued talking pictures over the years.

One of the most important pieces of equipment, for the photographer who really wants to improve, is a great big wastepaper basket.

To me documentary photography means making a picture so that the viewer doesn’t think about the man who made the picture. At its esthetic core is very old tradition in art: naturalism. And its purpose is to document all facets of social relationships.

You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.