Garry Winogrand Quotes

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.

I just see myself as a guy who's trying to make a film or, make art.

I think with pictures; I'm a very lousy writer. If I write without pictures, I become this pathetic chick sitting somewhere trying to be interesting.

All I do is make photos. It's my life.

I always knew I belonged on the other side of the lens.

To me, that is the essence of me as a photographer. It is those ideas, working with them, formulating them and eventually putting them down on paper, photographing them and then going on to the next step.

I've always considered myself a poet in everything that I do, whether it's photography or movie-making.

There is a secret, I think. When you are front of a camera there is something that happens. Some relationship, some movement, some strange kind of suspension. That's where you find the layer in yourself that is duplicated in everyone. And when you get it right, if you can imagine all the hearts beating in one beat, it's like that. It's beautiful.

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.

You see what you think, you see what you feel, you are what you see If with the camera you can make others see it - that is photography.

All you can do as an artist is do what you think is an extension of you. You put down on paper ... who you are. That's what being an artist is all about. And when it gets done, you don't look back at it and say, Oh, I could have done that better.

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.

Something catches your eye, or your interest. You attack it in some way or observe it in some way, and try to put it in some kind of form and take a picture. It's as simple as that.

I don't know. I don't go around looking at my pictures. I sometimes think I'm a mechanic. I just take pictures. When the time comes, for whatever reason, I get involved in editing and getting some prints made and stuff. There are things that interest me. But I don't really mull over them a lot.

Photography is a kind of overstatement, a heroic copulation with the material world.

I can't tell you how many pictures I've missed just 'cause I've been so hell bent on getting the shot I think I want.

You think you photograph a particular scene for the pleasure it gives. In fact it's the scene that wants to be photographed. You're merely an extra in the production.

I think I came alive when I started photography.

I don’t have a philosophy. I have a camera.

I love making pictures but I don't like talking about them.

I like to work my camera as if it were a musical instrument.

I'm not a designer, I'm a creator.

To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.

I was extremely irritated being photographed for a long time, then I gave up caring. Photography is a nauseating cliche, but there is a lot to it. You can tell so much about a person from it. You are exaggerating the consciousness. It's life-thickening, photography.

I take photographs with love, so I try to make them art objects. But I make them for myself first and foremost - that is important.