Patrick Demarchelier Quotes

I have more of a relationship with the subject than I do with my camera equipment. To me, camera equipment is like a tin of shoe polish and a brush - I use that as a tool, but my basic camera is my emotion and my eyes. It's not anything to do with the wonderful cameras I use.

I like to work my camera as if it were a musical instrument.

It's weird being a photographer because you really have to divorce yourself from the image.

I was always interested in photography and other forms of art.

Photography was a blessing because it filled my time. If I had to start over, I'd pursue photography - probably to the exclusion of acting.

Photography forces one out into the world, interacting with people and the environment. It flexes all those right brain, spatially-adept muscles.

Like most photographers, I try to capture a moment in my work.

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.

Photography, for me, is something I can control fully. It's wholly my own expressions.

I love Instagram and photography.

Photography doesn't teach you to express your emotions; it teaches you how to see.

And that desire-the strong desire to take pictures-is important. It borders on a need, based on a habit: the habit of seeing. Whether working or not, photographers are looking, seeing, and thinking about what they see, a habit that is both a pleasure and a problem, for we seldom capture in a single photograph the full expression of what we see and feel. It is the hope that we might express ourselves fully-and the evidence that other photographers have done so-that keep us taking pictures.

One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind. To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.

Photography is, first of all, a way of seeing.

The important thing is not the camera but the eye.

Photography is solitary and there are lags between seeing with your eyes and seeing through the lens, and then seeing the image on your computer... I often see things after the fact. So there’s a revelatory quality. And this definitely includes a sense of playfulness, because you’re not sure what the consequences are going to be.

My inspiration has always been photography's ability to stop time and reveal what the naked eye cannot see.

We should not confuse having a Flip camera with making a documentary.

I was just taking pictures to see what they looked like. Just for the fun of it. It wasn't about anything in some cases. Some of them were just about the joy of opening up an aperture and seeing what shows up.

I just started taking pictures, and it was - it was an instant love affair. It was just ecstatic.

If you're a photographer, you end up being the raw creative force that allows other people to see what kind of narrative you want to be giving or what kind of art that you want people to see.

I did photography in summer camp; I did it in high school. The only hard decision I've had to make was whether to go towards photo or film. And I ultimately realized that the type of photo I was interested in was actually photojournalism. And it's a very individualist career, whereas film is a very team-driven medium. So that's why I chose film.

I don’t have a philosophy. I have a camera. I look into the camera and take pictures. My photographs are the tiniest part of what I see that could be photographed. They are fragments of endless possibilities.

I do not see eye to eye with the camera.

One doesn't stop seeing. One doesn't stop framing. It doesn't turn off and turn on. It's on all the time.