Roland Barthes Quotes

“One picture is worth a thousand words,” said an ancient Chinese; but it may take ten thousand words to validate it.

I don't want the pictures to mean things. But the implication of the image and its relationship to the people that are viewing it is something I'm really interested in.

I think of images as an immune system and a transit system.

Well, visual language is another boring discussion about the nature of film.

A picture is worth a thousand words.

One picture is worth a thousand words.

Everything I try to do wants to be able to push communication through the notion of the visual image.

I find movies rely upon dialogue too much sometimes, and you lose the power of what really the most basic cinematic language is, which is the visual language.

The movies that influenced me were movies that told their stories through pictures more than words.

Images have a unique power to impart that which is beyond words.

A picture is worth 10K words - but only those to describe the picture. Hardly any sets of 10K words can be adequately described with pictures.

Image is an international language.

I've always been so surprised by how people interpret my photos in context.

When I work on a book, I usually start with a question. And I don't sit around and go 'I need to write a book. What's a good question?' It will be a question that's just clanging around in my head. So for 'What It Is,' it was this idea of 'What is an image?'

A sign to me is a one-liner, a symbol is very complex and my house is a series of symbols.

So to me it's very similar in terms of trying to distill within the image, those elements that are gonna form, hopefully, a compelling visual statement.

That night image had replaced the written word as the natural language of politics.

A visual always brings a first impression. But if there's going to be a first impression, I might as well use it to control the story. So why not do something like throw a mask on?

Images are ... a kind of emotional shorthand.

How does meaning get into the image? Where does it end? And if it ends, what is there beyond?

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.

But empirically I've come to understand that my photographs really don't do any harm.

The thing is that pictures are everywhere. The question is what we don't see, and why don't we see so much. I just see it.

No matter what your cultural sophistication or what language you speak, everyone can understand images.

Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface.