Don McCullin Quotes

Most of the photographs people take with their cameraphones are of little value in terms of documentary.

I think there are two types of photographers, those who want to document the world and those who want to create their own world. I am more interested in documenting the world and presenting it to people with the question attached, 'Does this make any sense to you?'

To see, and to show, is the mission now undertaken by Life.

Photography helps people to see.

The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.

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.

You know, a documentary is only interesting once in a while. If you look at a whole book of Dorothea [Lange]'s where she has row after row of people bending over and digging out carrots - that can be very tedious. And so it's only once in a while that something happens that is worth doing.

Obviously I am a photographer and I believe in my medium: I do think that powerful photographs can force change. It doesn't take long to look and be engaged in a strong image whereas, with a story, you have to actually sit down and pause and be involved in it.

I'm a documentary photographer. That's what I've always wanted to be; that's where my heart and soul is.

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

To photograph is to confer importance.

In America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it.

I got a lot of flak originally for writing with photographs, because the great cliche in photography is that one photograph is worth a thousand words, and photographers are usually dodo birds anyway.

I've always believed that photography is a way to shape human perception.

You know, the camera is not meant just to show misery.

The photograph itself doesn't interest me. I want only to capture a minute part of reality.

Each time I arrived in a new city, I'd get lost in the streets and photograph everything that looked interesting, taking nearly a thousand photographs every day. After each day of shooting, I'd select 30 or 40 of my favorite photographs and post them on Facebook. I named the albums after my first impression of each city.

I have always had a great interest in visually documenting the past.

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

Talking with pictures and making memories is universally appealing.

Film is anti-language.

A camera must be part of me - an extra limb capable of freezing a situation without complicated preparation.

My job is very simply that of a photojournalist. I want to stop people's eye on the page, I want to move the viewer to laughter, to sadness, sometimes to wince - not to impress other photographers.

I seem to be always returning to photography in my poetry. I guess you could say that I'm documenting the personal history and relationship I have with photography.

The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don't have to explain things with words.