Photographic Art Quotes

Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.

Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past.

Contrast is what makes photography interesting.

The negative is the equivalent of the composer's score, and the print the performance.

Family photos, pictures of groups, those are truely wonderful. And they are just as good as the old masters, just as rich and just as beautifully composed (what does that mean anyway).

Photography is Art and Art is Photography.

This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.

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.

A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.

I have no interest in being famous. I just want to make famous photographs.

When I've had enough of words, I go out into the city for a long walk; sometimes I'll go out walking for several miles. And I'll just take photographs and hope for something striking or unusual to happen that I can organize into a picture frame.

I always wanted to photograph the universal subjects.

The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.

When you pose for a photograph, it's behind a smile that isn't yours. You are angry and hungry and alive. What I value in you is that intensity. I want to make portraits as intense as people.

I've always thought photography was an art form, but it had very low appreciation in the beginning, except for some Europeans, and of course Stieglitz. Stieglitz always considered photography to be an art form and is the "father" of the creative concepts of the twentieth century.

The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.

However spontaneous I hope a photograph will look, I always put a lot of thought into how I can make it happen. The very best pictures are the most relaxed, so a lot of fussing around technically can completely break the spell, and everyone freezes up with nerves.

I tend to always carry a camera with me. I live next to a fire station, and I've got lots of photos of the hook and ladder coming out of the house. And I like food, so I tend to photograph wonderfully presented food all the time. To me those are very pleasant memories.

You always want to come back with an image that's interesting visually, and you hope to get something from the person you photograph that's different than other images you know of these people.

There are two dirty words in photography, one is art, the other is good taste

How I wished I'd have had a camera of my own, a mad mental camera that could register pictorial shots, of the photographic artist himself prowling about for his ultimate shot - an epic in itself. (On the road with Robert Frank, 1958)

I've exhibited quite a few of my photographs. I expand them digitally till they're very big. It's an art school thing, I suppose.

The process must be concealed from - non-existent for - the photographer, who by definition need think of the art in the taking and not in the making photographs... In short, all that should be necessary to get a good picture is to take a good picture.

The only thing that gets in the way of a really good photograph, is the camera

Photography is a transformation, not a reproduction.