Elliott Erwitt Quotes

I don't believe in dressing up reality. I don't believe in using makeup to make things look smoother.

Photograph the world as it is. Nothing's more interesting than reality.

I feel strongly that I need to try to make my shows as real as possible. What you see is what you get.

Stripping away artifice - it's the constant standard I aim for in acting, to approximate life. People talk about being bigger than life - but there's nothing bigger than life.

Tricks you need to transform something which appears fantastic, unbelievable into something plausible, credible, those I learned from journalism. The key is to tell it straight. It is done by reporters and by country folk.

Part of the role of photography is to exaggerate, and that is an aspect that I have to puncture. I do that by showing the world as I really find it.

It's all about the script. Reality is key to me and less cutesy.

I try and photograph people as they are. I do not want to hide anything. I want to bring across a personality, a humanity. It is not a case of model A or model B against a white background. I am interested in the person.

I think everything needs to be played real, for reality's sake, for truth. And that is the drama and the comedy. When you do that, it's funnier. And when you do that, you really do hit the emotional beats. I do it the same way as I do a drama. I just play it for truth, and then maybe have a little bit of fun with it sometimes.

I try not to be spectacular with the camera. I try to be a witness of what's going on.

I have thought it my duty to exhibit things as they are, not as they ought to be.

I prefer nothing, unless it is true.

When you blow away the foam, you get down to the real stuff.

Nothing is true, but that which is simple.

I'd like to be invisible. To be anonymous and see things for what they really are. The truth may be painful but it's probably useful!

There's not swelling music and emotional scenes in life, and there's not long pauses when you tell a joke for everybody to laugh. That's not how it goes. Life just sort of happens to you.

I don't want to be like some of those celebrities walking around, just so full of themselves. I always want to be down-to-earth, want to be a person like when you meet them, they're the same person that you think of them in the article or something.

There’s only one subject for fiction or poetry or even a joke: how it is. In all the arts, the payoff is always the same: recognition. If it works, you say that’s real, that’s truth, that’s life, that’s the way things are. ‘There it is.’

The man who is really serious, with the urge to find out what truth is, has no style at all. He lives only in what is.

Realism: the wealth of detail guarantees the truth of the tale.

I'm no actor and I never have been. What people see on the screen is me.

You can't write nothing that ain't real.

People think I'm into positive thinking. I'm not a positive thinking guy. I'm into the truth. I'm a hunter of human excellence.

Reality even when it is sad is better than illusions. Illusions are at the mercy of any winds that blow. Real happiness must come from within, from a fixed purpose and faith in one's fellow men.