Teju Cole Quotes

You know, they always say that the photographer is a hunter of images. That is a flattering image, the idea of a hunter, it's virile, acquired power. Actually though, it isn't that. We are really fishermen with hooks and lines.

The subject gives you the best idea of how to make a photograph. So I just wait for something to happen.

I have been a photographer all my life....and have made photographs of many things and for many reasons. But one thing that becomes more and more apparent is that I am simply only as good as my next photograph. That's the one that counts the most....For this reason I find it a delight to face a new day, and to develop that new roll of film. It's a great way to live.

I have asked students at the beginning of their careers, what things of that sort might haunt them – what things they must photograph, things they have to try to shoot even before they master the intricacies of making dye transfer prints.

The photographer's art is a continuous discovery which requires patience and time.

I love painting. As far as photography is concerned, I understand nothing.

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 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.

There are two parts to the process: taking the picture and finding ways of using it.

I learned working with the negatives could make for better pictures

Photographier: c'est mettre sur la meme ligne de mire la tete, l'oeil et le coeur.

Photography is solitary and there are lags between seeing with your eyes and seeing through the lens, and then seeing the image on your computer... I often see things after the fact. So there’s a revelatory quality. And this definitely includes a sense of playfulness, because you’re not sure what the consequences are going to be.

Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow.

On digital photography: It's fantastic, but it's not a freebie for anything. You still have to have this (he points to his eyes), and this (points to his heart), and feet.

For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.

To be able to take my pictures, I have to look, all the time, at the people and places I care about. And I must do so with both ardor and cool appraisal, with the passions of eye and heart, but in that ardent heart there must also be a splinter of ice.

Photography is, first of all, a way of seeing.

I'm actually not so sure what I'm hoping to find making photographs. You always want to come back with an image that's interesting visually, and you hope to get something from the person you photograph that's different than other images you know of these people. I don't know how I go about it. I also don't know how exactly what I set out to get other than these two things.

Pictures you have taken have an influence on those that you are going to make. That's life!

But let's speak of art for a moment. Yes, art. I know a gentleman who makes excellent portraits. This gentleman is a camera.

You know, that's the reality, but I always shoot movies for the screen, because that's just the experience that I want to get out of it.

The act of making a photograph is less a question of what is being looked at than how.

People go, 'What do you want to do?' What do you want to do? What are you feeling? Going into a shoot not fully knowing what I want to do—that excitement, that thing that happens, is just so powerful and makes such great pictures.

Many photographers are consumed with the idea of making beautiful contact sheets. I am far more interested in making the best final print I can.

You don't make a photograph just with a camera