Berenice Abbott Quotes

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

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

One of the difficulties of photography is that it is much better at being explicit than at being reticent.

The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects.

If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph.

Photography seduces us into thinking we can believe photographs, whereas we can't really believe that a picture can tell us any kind of truth at all.

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

Photography helps people to see.

I have always stood in awe of the camera. I recognize it for the instrument it is, part Stradivarius, part scalpel.

I've always thought photography is not so much of an art form but a way of communicating and passing on information.

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

I believe that the medium of photography prevails entirely as an act of faith in the souls of those who love and practice it. And so every photograph becomes another subtle variation on the theme of the medium itself.

The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.

The photograph is the most perfect picture. It does not change; it is absolute, and therefore autonomous, unconditional, devoid of style. Both in its way of informing, and in what it informs of, it is my source.

There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit.

Photography is a kind of overstatement, a heroic copulation with the material world.

There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.

I hate cameras. I hate cameras and I hate camera phones. The camera's my worst enemy and my best friend. It's the way I convey my emotions to the world without saying a word, so I use it. People always say, 'You come alive as soon as the camera's on!'

The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion.

I do love to capture beauty in this world. And photos can last the test of time.

Photographs can reveal something to us, and they can also conceal things.

The camera doesn't intimidate me.

A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into.

I think there's a connection with 'Nightcrawler' and 'Blowup' and other films where visual imagery is integral to the story. It allows you to play with images.

I go and see anything that's visually new, any technology that's about picture-making. The technology won't make the pictures different, but someone using it will.