Sebastiao Salgado Quotes

Art is the perpetual motion of illusion. The highest purpose of art is to inspire. What else can you do? What else can you do for any one but inspire them?

I have to go with what the painting says to me. The painting is always informing me. I'm its servant; it's not mine. I'm doing what it wants.

I look at the dancers and I get the inspiration for the work from them.

I am kept awake by the list of possibilities for shooting more photos and deciding what I must prioritise next.

My memory of those places is better than my pictures. That's why I get much more satisfaction out of shooting thematic work that has to do with an idea that I'm searching for, or searching to express.

A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.

I haven't made anything I don't believe in. I've always started a movie with a song in my heart, and even when I'm a little unclear about it, something magical happens and it comes into focus in a way that I'm feeling good about.

I've always kind of ripped from real life to some degree or at least how I'm feeling in the moment.

I'm not a politician or a scholar or political historian. I'm just a photographer who's trying to capture a spirit. It's not an intellectual process; it's an intuitive process.

I have always found photography magical, and became more taken with it whilst modeling.

An artist is a dreamer consenting to dream of the actual world.

The artist is the medium between his fantasies and the rest of the world.

So much of what we do as artists is a combination of personal experience and imagination, and how that all creeps into your work is not so linear.

I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help.

I have a vision of life, and I try to find equivalents for it in the form of photographs.

I think the job of an original designer is to inspire.

When you work with a great director, you realise you are far from being a director.

The creative artist seems to be almost the only kind of man that you could never meet on neutral ground. You can only meet him as an artist. He sees nothing objectively because his own ego is always in the foreground of every picture.

The imagination imitates. It is the critical spirit that creates.

I'm inspired by art - in whatever form it takes. I love when I see a painting or a photograph that captures my attention.

Working with Timbaland, he gives me insight; he throws me different ways to approach the beat, and those extra tips go a long way. I know that he's worked with some of the greats, so it's just motivation. I feel inspired when we're in the booth together.

I admire a lot of photographers, but I feel very disconnected from them at the same time. I don't feel I employ any technique like these people in my work. I guess if there's any influence from any of these photographers, it's this: They were concerned only with beauty. Not with 'cool.' I hope I'm doing the same.

Life and art are inseparable.

I think I'm better at songwriting now, and it does come easier. I have faith in my initial instincts.

Being an artist, you soak up imagery, and you put it back out in whatever form you do your own imagery.