Alfred Eisenstaedt Quotes

A camera teaches you how to see without a camera.

There's no particular class of photograph that I think is any better than any other class. I'm always and forever looking for the image that has spirit! I don't give a damn how it got made.

Photography is, first of all, a way of seeing.

To photograph: it is to put on the same line of sight the head, the eye and the heart.

This thing called the camera, that takes everything in equally, taught me a lot about how to see.

My pictures are my eyes. I photograph what I see - and what I want to see.

A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.

A style is not a matter of camera angles or fancy footwork, it's an expression, an accurate expression of your particular opinion.

I'm fascinated by the way Diane Arbus saw things. She came from this fashion background and then twisted it.

Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.

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.

The challenge for me has first been to see things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing ball. In a word, I have tried to be objective. What I mean by objectivity is not the objectivity of a machine, but of a sensible human being with the mystery of personal selection at the heart of it. The second challenge has been to impose order onto the things seen and to supply the visual context and the intellectual framework - that to me is the art of photography.

Photography doesn't teach you to express your emotions; it teaches you how to see.

You see what you think, you see what you feel, you are what you see If with the camera you can make others see it - that is photography.

With photography, everything is in the eye and these days I feel young photographers are missing the point a bit. People always ask about cameras but it doesn't matter what camera you have. You can have the most modern camera in the world but if you don't have an eye, the camera is worthless. Young people know more about modern cameras and lighting than I do. When I started out in photography I didn't own an exposure meter - I couldn't , they didn't exist! I had to guess.

Light is my inspiration. My photographic images search for dimensions that words cannot touch- the result of intense responses to personal experiences. I do not wish to "record," but rather to touch upon the illusive meanings which I perceive and try to comprehend in this limitless universe.

The photographer and the director are where reality and fantasy meet.

My job is to paint what I see, not what I know.

The meaning of quality in photography's best pictures lies written in the language of vision. That language is learned by chance, not system.

A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.

Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow.

I admire photographers who can take much more ordinarily subject matter and make it transcend that ordinariness, so that it becomes something else fresh and new. It opens this doorway. I really admire people who can do that with photography.

The act of making a photograph is less a question of what is being looked at than how.

A painter may be looking at the world in a way which is very different from everyone else. If he's a craftsman, he can get other people to see the world through his eyes, and so he enlarges our vision, perception, and there's great value in that.

I look at everything in an artistic way.