Jim Goldberg Quotes

Photography can be a powerful instrument for change, and photojournalists can tell stories that make a difference.

Just as Renaissance artists provided narratives for the era they lived in, so do I. I'm always looking beyond the surface. I've done that ever since I first picked up a camera.

I did take my camera along, as I felt there wouldn't be enough time to draw the things I wanted to do. I did some drawing and did a lot of photography but I was not part of Stryker's outfit at all.

My job is to take the pictures, communicate a message, to bring those images to the greater public through whatever publication I'm working for. My job is really to be a messenger, and that's what I've been doing.

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

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

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.

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 not an artist. I set the camera up and tell my story.

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

If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug around a camera.

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

I often go out on the street with my camera and ask questions.

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.

Photography must be integrated with the story.

I always wanted to be a photographer. While I was at school, I got a lab-monkey holiday job in the darkrooms at the 'Independent.' What they taught me there was: you need to get the whole story in one frame.

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

I've always been a bit of a documentarian.

I love the early process of asking questions about a story and deciding which questions matter most.

'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.

There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described. I photograph to see what something will look like photographed.

A writer is not a prophet, is not a philosopher; he's just someone who is witness to what is around him. And so writing is a way to... it's the best way to testify, to be a witness.

I took lots of photographs and had planned to write a treatise on how it worked, but I quickly got bored with that idea and wrote a scientific fairy tale instead.

My role is to bear witness and to bring back what people see and tell you.