Dorothea Lange Quotes

I hate cameras. I hate cameras and I hate camera phones. The camera's my worst enemy and my best friend. It's the way I convey my emotions to the world without saying a word, so I use it. People always say, 'You come alive as soon as the camera's on!'

In America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it.

I take a lot of pride in my photography.

I don’t think we can separate art from overall human dignity and hope.

The thing about being a photographer that's so cool is that you get to participate, but you also get to disappear. The camera is in front of your face all the time.

The camera can be a machine gun, a warm kiss, a sketchbook. Shooting a camera is like saying, Yes, yes, yes. There is no maybe. All the maybes should go in the trash.

The camera gave me an incredible freedom. It gave me the ability to parade through the world and look at people and things very, very closely.

It’s not when you press the shutter, but why you press the shutter.

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.

A camera gives you a purpose.

When I’m behind a camera I forget I exist.

You know, a documentary is only interesting once in a while. If you look at a whole book of Dorothea [Lange]'s where she has row after row of people bending over and digging out carrots - that can be very tedious. And so it's only once in a while that something happens that is worth doing.

Suddenly this camera, this thing, allowed me to move around the world in a certain kind of way, with a certain kind of purpose. (On receiving a camera for her twenty-first birthday)

With a camera, one has to love individual cases.

Behind the camera, I was invisible. When I lifted it up to my eye it was like I crawled into the lens, losing myself there. and everything else fell away.

Nothing happens when you sit at home. I always make it a point to carry a camera with me at all times...I just shoot at what interests me at that moment.

Photography is not a sport. It has no rules. Everything must be dared and tried!

Never beg for mercy. Accept that you have failed. Begging is for dogs and humans.

The camera’s not a camera, really. It’s an open door we need to walk through. It’s up to us to keep moving our feet.

I don't shoot kittens with balls of wool. I don't shoot sunsets. What draws me? Ironic, surreal, unexplained, timely moments.

The very idea of photography is as Oliver Wendell Holmes said in the 19th century, "it's a mirror with a memory."

What I want is the world to remember the problems and the people I photograph. What I want is to create a discussion about what is happening around the world and to provoke some debate with these pictures. Nothing more than this. I don't want people to look at them and appreciate the light and the palate of tones. I want them to look inside and see what the pictures represent, and the kind of people I photograph.

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

To talk about photos rather than making them seems idiotic to me. It's as though I went on and on about a woman I adored instead of making love to her.

For me photography has been a profession, an avocation. Now it has become a way of life.