Annie Leibovitz Quotes

I've always wanted to be aware of what's going on around me, and I've wanted to use photography as an instrument of research into and reporting on the life of my own time.

I thought it would be funny to take a photo in the White House bathroom, I take pictures everywhere I go, but I don't think I can top that one.

I'm not like paparazzi. I never force myself on anyone. I always ask, and some places offer money. And so I try and get these photos to give you, the viewer, a real look at what I was seeing.

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.

I think a lot of times, especially for certain stories, photographers travel together for safety reasons, and they also invariably cross paths. But you could have 10 photographers shooting together in the same spot but capturing different images.

'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 got my first camera when I was 21 - my boyfriend gave it to me for my birthday - but at that point politics was my life, and I viewed the camera as a tool for expressing my political beliefs rather than as an art medium.

The most powerful weapon in the world, as far as I'm concerned, is the camera.

Brady's Photographic Corps, heartily welcomed in each of our armies, has been a feature as distinct and omnipresent as the corps of balloon, telegraph, and signal operators. They have threaded the weary stadia of every march; have hung on the skirts of every battle scene; have caught the compassion of the hospital, the romance of the bivouac, the pomp and panoply of the field review.

I'm not saying that photographers are dumber than other people, but they are the folks who walk around with brilliant white lights in nighttime riots.

I love Robert Capa.

Danny Lyon is one of my favorite photographers.

I came up in photography, and Dust Bowl-era photography is a lot of the reason that I got behind the camera in the first place.

My uncle was a photographer for 'The Irish Times.'

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

At one point, I wanted to be a wildlife photographer. I also love to travel, so maybe I'd do travel writing.

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

I like Ryan McGinley's work.

I'm trying to grow more as a journalist and understand the story I'm photographing in order to communicate it in a better way.

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.

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.

Magnum photographers were meant to go out as a crusade ... to places like famine and war and ... I went out and went round the corner to the local supermarket because this to me is the front line.

Actually, documentary pictures include every subject in the world - good, bad, indifferent. I have yet to see a fine photograph which is not a good document.

I have respectfully declined the president's invitation to the White House today.

Tomorrow President Obama will host NASCAR racing champion Kevin Harvick at the White House. They both said they look forward to spending an hour or two not having the slightest interest in what the other is saying.