Yann Arthus-Bertrand Quotes

'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.

I became obsessed with the storytelling of photography and going on little adventures.

In the studio, I always put on National Geographic for inspiration. Looking at lions eating gazelles, all that type of stuff.

A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.

I try to use whatever I know about photography to be of service to the people I'm photographing.

The really simple approach to photography is a great balance to making the films.

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.

The lions taught me photography. They taught me patience and the sense of beauty, a beauty that penetrates you.

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.

I've grown up around people who love photography, and I think from being photographed for so long, I always wanted to understand how it worked, and I've been fortunate enough to be photographed by some really wonderful photographers, and so I learnt a lot from them, and I always ask them questions.

They ... asked me: 'How do you make your pictures?' I was puzzled ... I said, I don't know, it's not important.

I'm not trying to be in your face and take a picture that is like a journalistic kind of image. I got interested in a kind of complicated, compiled, visual field.

I don't know how to say easily what I learned. One thing I can say I learned is how amazing photography could be.

Photography is only intuition, a perpetual interrogation - everything except a stage set.

It is a great honor for me to be compared to Henri Cartier-BressonBut I believe there is a very big difference in the way we put ourselves inside the stories we photograph. He always strove for the decisive moment as being the most important. I always work for a group of pictures, to tell a story. If you ask which picture in a story I like most, it is impossible for me to tell you this. I don't work for an individual picture. If I must select one individual picture for a client, it is very difficult for me.

I tend to think of the act of photographing, generally speaking, as an adventure. My favorite thing is to go where I’ve never been.

One reason I was interested in photography was to get away from the preciousness of the art object.

Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the 'ah-ha'.

The intensive use of photographs by mass media lays ever fresh responsibilities upon the photographer. We have to acknowledge the existence of a chasm between the economic needs of our consumer society and the requirements of those who bear witness to this epoch. This affects us all, particularly the younger generations of photographers. We must take greater care than ever not to allow ourselves to be separated from the real world and from humanity.

Producing a photographic document involves preparation in excess. There is first the examination of the idea of the project. Then the visits to the scene, the casual conversations, and more formal interviews - talking, and listening, and looking, looking. ... And finally, the pictures themselves, each one planned, talked, taken and examined in terms of the whole.

I took photos from 1976 to when I left in 1993, primarily for Interview and a column I had called "Bob Colacello's Out" which Andy had conceived of. I've never taken a picture since, not even with my phone! It just felt too Andy Warhol to keep going around town taking photographs. And I never really thought of doing anything with them after I left the magazine until this great Art Director Sam Shahid about for or five years ago asked where all of the old photos were.

When I studied with Nicholas Ray he was always telling us, "If you want to make films, watch a lot of films, but don't just watch films, go take a walk, look at the sky, read a book about meteorology, look at the design of people's shoes. Because all of them are part of filmmaking." So I thought, perfect! That's a good job for me.

I never look for a photograph. The photograph finds me and says, I'm here! and I say, Yes, I see you. I hear you.

When people talk to me about picture hunters, I very quietly laugh. I'm not a hunter of pictures, I'm a fisher of pictures.

Your own photography is never enough. Every photographer who has lasted has depended on other peoples pictures too - photographs that may be public or private, serious or funny, but that carry with them a reminder of community.