Documenting Reality Quotes

I'm a social writer in the sense that I want to record, but not in the sense of trying to change people's minds.

Journalism is not easy. It's the first rough draft. I don't think you need to wait around until you have the definitive thing. You record what's there; don't delude yourself that this is the ultimate historical view.

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?'

Sometimes I enjoy just photographing the surface because I think it can be as revealing as going to the heart of the matter.

For black folks, the camera provided a means to document a reality that could, if necessary, be packed, stored, moved from place to place... [Photography] offered a way to contain memories, to overcome loss, to keep history.

Ever since ROME, OPEN CITY, I have maintained a conscious, determined endeavor to try to understand the world in which I live, in a spirit of humility and respect for the facts and for history. What as the meaning of ROME, OPEN CITY? We were emerging from the tragedy of the war. We had all taken part in it, for we were all its victims. I sought only to picture the essence of things. I had absolutely no interest in telling a romanticized tale along the usual lives of film drama. The actual facts were each more dramatic than any screen cliche.

With documentaries, what's beautiful about them is that you capture something unique in a shot, something that will never repeat itself.

All those young photographers who are at work in the world, determined upon the capture of actuality, do not know that they are agents of Death.

Photos tend to organize chaos, to define what we're doing here. It is essential that individuals' voices depict the world around us, as we are increasingly controlled by large institutions, large companies and large systems.

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

When I hear the word 'documentary,' I don't think certain things should be left out. You've got to keep it 100 percent as much as you can, unless your group has a meeting beforehand and says, 'Yo - don't say this, 'cause boom, boom, boom.' Other than that, it's a documentary so let's document, you know what I mean?

The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.

The reason I call myself a documentary photographer is the idea of how photographs contain and participate in history.

The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.

Photographs can reveal something to us, and they can also conceal things.

Today we are confronted with reality on the vastest scale mankind has known and this puts a greater responsibility on the photographer.

I began making pictures because I wanted to record what supports hope: the untranslatable mystery and beauty of the world. Along the way, however, the camera also caught evidence against hope, and I eventually concluded that this, too, belonged in pictures if they were to be truthful and thus useful.

I, as the writer, can be very clear that I am writing a work of heightened fiction, as opposed to documenting horrible things that happen every day in the world. Which I have no interest in doing.

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

I thought it would be good not to hide the fact that you're taking a photograph, and have people react and come in close and also make a commentary on what's being photographed: 'This is a photo, this is my point of view.'

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

Now and then, someone would accuse me of being evil - of letting people destroy themselves while I watched, just so I could film them and tape-record them. But I didn't think of myself as evil - just realistic.

There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described. I photograph to see what something will look like photographed.

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.

I do have my own personal convictions and values, and I live by those. But as an artist, as a portrait photographer, my job is to tell the truth and to capture someone's spirit on a certain day. And it's never the whole truth; it's the truth I experience in a very intense and intimate fashion.