Paul Watson Quotes

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

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.

Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.

I knew from the first moment I picked up a camera, on my first school assignment, what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was going to find a way to travel the world and tell the stories of the people I met through photographs.

I'm always taking behind-the-scenes photos and stuff.

One of the elements of photography is, just by nature, journalistic. It's some kind of documentation. The most successful pictures to me are with an interesting looking girl. They're not being provocative. They're just presenting their drugs to you, showing you what they take. There's a good-looking girl, but here's this thing about her that's not so cool. It makes you feel a little uneasy.

The camera can be the most deadly weapon since the assassin's bullet. Or it can be the lotion of the heart.

Even the photographs of Henri Cartier-Bresson, with all due respect to him, are notoriously burned and dodged.

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

I don't want to knock photography, and I don't feel that film is up there but photography isn't. I think they're next to each other really, you know. There's an incredible strength to a still picture. Or there can be an incredible strength to a still picture that can outlive you. That can outlive a film.

Fashion photographers are the new painters.

I shot images of everything I could find over the course of a year. I would go all over the world and take pictures. In a day, I could easily take thousands.

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

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

I remember the first time I went out on the street to shoot pictures. I was in downtown Philadelphia, and I just took a walk and started making contact with people and photographing them, and I thought, 'I love this. This is what I want to do forever.' There was never another question.

Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world.

I realize that I had the best of serious picture journalism.

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

A photographer without a magazine behind him is like a farmer without fields.

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

Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.

I admired the work of photographers like Beaton, Penn, and Avedon as much as I respected the grittier photographers such as Robert Frank. But in the same way that I had to find my own way of reportage, I had to find my own form of glamour.

I've never put myself in the mindset that I'm actually any good at taking pictures, I just love to shoot things that catch my eye, whether it's landscapes or just my kids.

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

It doesn't matter if you use a box camera or you use a Leica; the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing.