Errol Morris Quotes

What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.

I'm drawn to cinema, especially when you're on a project that feels like it's going to be a challenge.

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.

Photographers have always been each other's biggest fans.

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 enjoy photography. It's a lot of fun. It keeps me on my P's and Q's and, when you think about it, most people think photography is just going to a game. But you start to think, dang, that would be a good picture. Or you're driving along and see something and think, 'that would be nice.'

I was drawn to photography as an extension of film, and the beauty of film is that it's a sensuous, fetishistic medium.

Photography is an adventure just as life is an adventure. If man wishes to express himself photographically, he must understand, surely to a certain extent, his relationship to life.

Photography isn't about seeing, it's about feeling. If I don't have some kind of feeling for what I'm shooting, how can I expect the person who looks at it to feel anything?

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

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

I firmly believe in the value of books: it's the way to pass on our work, and it allows us to explore new ways to express our creativity. In this specific case, Mariano Vivanco shot some images of David for this project's purpose.

Unless you photograph what you love, you're not going to make good art.

My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me.

For me the true business of photography is to capture a bit of reality (whatever that is) on film...if, later, the reality means something to someone else, so much the better.

A picture can say 1000 words but it can also inspire you to write 1000 more.

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.

I love art. It is uplifting.

I always feel when you work with an artist and whenever I work with a really good photographer, I try to give him or her their own artistic freedom because that's the way you get the best work or at least the most interesting work.

In reality, however, an artist is a product of art

The camera would miss it all. A magnificent picture is never worth a thousand perfect words. Ansel Adams can be a great artist, but he can never be Shakespeare. His tools are too literal.

I personally just love movies about the creative process.

The camera’s not a camera, really. It’s an open door we need to walk through. It’s up to us to keep moving our feet.

To make good photographs, to express something, to contribute something to the world he lives in, and to contribute something to the art of photography besides imitations of the best photographers on the market today, that is basic training, the understanding of self.

I'm one simple way I think I've succeeded was capturing Elsa [Dorfman]. There's something about Elsa, her personality, and her work that I believe is there.