Catherine Opie Quotes

A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.

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

Now, when I came on to Washington to begin my job, I was so interested in photography at that time that I really would have preferred to work with Stryker than with my department, which was more artistic if you wish.

I think there are two types of photographers, those who want to document the world and those who want to create their own world. I am more interested in documenting the world and presenting it to people with the question attached, 'Does this make any sense to you?'

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

I may be wrong, but the essential illustrative nature of most documentary photography, and the worship of the object per se, in our best nature photography, is not enough to satisfy the man of today, compounded as he is of Christ, Freud, and Marx.

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

As much as I'm not a journalist, I use journalism. And when you photograph a relationship, it's quite wonderful to let something unfold in front of you.

I'm not a photojournalist.

I have always had a great interest in visually documenting the past.

The most powerful weapon in the world, as far as I'm concerned, is the camera.

My uncle was a photographer for 'The Irish Times.'

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

Let us first say what photography is not. A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. It is not just a pretty picture, not an exercise in contortionist techniques and sheer print quality. It is or should be a significant document, a penetrating statement, which can be described in a very simple term-selectivity.

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.

I like Ryan McGinley's work.

Photographers do more assignments than reporters do, so they know their communities better.

I'm not a documentarian. I'm not a photojournalist.

A bad historian is even more dangerous than dead documentary wood.

My job is very simply that of a photojournalist. I want to stop people's eye on the page, I want to move the viewer to laughter, to sadness, sometimes to wince - not to impress other photographers.

I'm trying to grow more as a journalist and understand the story I'm photographing in order to communicate it in a better way.

I grew up looking at National Geographic. I always wondered who was taking the photos and how.

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

To me documentary photography means making a picture so that the viewer doesn’t think about the man who made the picture. At its esthetic core is very old tradition in art: naturalism. And its purpose is to document all facets of social relationships.

Magnum photographers were meant to go out as a crusade ... to places like famine and war and ... I went out and went round the corner to the local supermarket because this to me is the front line.