Alfred Eisenstaedt Quotes

Photographs aren't accounts of scrutiny. The shutter is open for a fraction of a second.

Life is not significant details, illuminated by a flash, fixed forever. Photographs are.

I'm so drawn to photography because you can convey a complex story in a single frame.

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

Essentially what photography is is life lit up.

One advantage of photography is that it's visual and can transcend language.

I think that's the strength of photography - to decide the decisive moment, to click in the moment to come up with a picture that never comes back again.

I travel, I read, I write, I have other lives. But when I have a camera, I know that's my country, my island.

Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.

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

Cinema sustains life. It captures death in its progress.

I wish more people felt that photography was an adventure the same as life itself and felt that their individual feelings were worth expressing. To me, that makes photography more exciting.

I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do - that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it, I felt very perverse.

To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see 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.

With photography, you zero in; you put a lot of energy into short moments, and then you go on to the next thing.

Video is freeing, but also lazier. You have to recreate the love of the moment.

Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness.

A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.

Capturing a beautiful moment in a photo is something I'm very passionate about.

Photographs speak to me, and I obey.

Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts.

All I need is a camera and I'll make things happen.

Whatever it is about pictures, photographs, it's just about impossible to follow up with words. They don't have anything to do with each other.

It's something that I've always been attracted to, that idea of letting everything happen in a single frame.