Harry Callahan Quotes

If you choose your subject selectively - intuitively - the camera can write poetry.

The camera is not the instrument. People are always the instrument.

If you're a photographer, you end up being the raw creative force that allows other people to see what kind of narrative you want to be giving or what kind of art that you want people to see.

I love photography and I love the art of photography. So when I'm working with high-level art photographers, I give them artistic freedom because I want that for myself when it's my turn to do my work and I never try and control it or say I'll only do this or I want it like that.

It is easy to take a photograph, but it is harder to make a masterpiece in photography than in any other art medium.

Only a fraction of the camera's possibilities interests me - the marvelous mixture of emotion and geometry, together in a single instant.

I believe that photography can create great works of art, but hitherto it has been extraordinarily bourgeois and babbling. (1908)

I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.

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.

The herculean task of a photographer is to capture a momentary frame as beautiful in reality, as it would be in a dream.

I believe, even when I'm doing my standup or my acting or whatever I'm doing, I believe in painting pictures.

The camera is my tool. Through it I give a reason to everything around me.

I like to feel that all my best photographs had strong personal visions and that a photograph that doesn't have a personal vision or doesn't communicate emotion fails.

I crave to be able to photograph the way a painter paints - in a loose, expressive way.

I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.

I think of myself as a writer who photographs. Images, for me, can be considered poems, short stories or essays. And I've always thought the best place for my photographs was inside books of my own creation.

What I find most satisfying about photography is the way in which it allows me to document 'reality' while at the same time creating my own version thereof; in other words, the reality I present is a reality based upon what I choose to include in the frame and what I choose to leave out.

Like most photographers, I try to capture a moment in my work.

Poetry carries the imagery which is large enough for the kind of life we want for ourselves.

I started out as an artist, and what I do is verbal paintings. I paint a picture. Hopefully, you'll see the characters and what they're doing and what they're saying.

Literally, FX is like, 'How can we foster your vision?' My vision is pretty much taking pictures of the way I see my life.

For me, when I started writing, it was mostly poetry. And poetry is very visual. I feel the same way about the way that I approach direction. There might be a theme within the visuals that you're choosing that people don't consciously pick up on, but that they feel.

Everything I choose to photograph, I think is beautiful.

Art is observing society around you, representing it through your eyes.

I've always preferred being behind the camera.