Photography Quotes from the greatest photographers of all time
When a well-known photographer explains what photography means to them we get a glimpse into their philosophy on life and creativity — and this is where photography quotes straight from their mouths. Words are powerful, but so are photographs.
Regardless of where you’re at in your photographic career, words from famous photographers (and some who aren’t) is a great way to get excited and inspired about shooting.
I’ve put together 50 inspirational photography quotes that will motivate you to get out there:
“Photography is truth.” — Jean-Luc Godard
“The eye should learn to listen before it looks.” ― Robert Frank
“A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth. ” ― Richard Avedon
“No matter how much crap you gotta plow through to stay alive as a photographer, no matter how many bad assignments, bad days, bad clients, snotty subjects, obnoxious handlers, wigged-out art directors, technical disasters, failures of the mind, body, and will, all the shouldas, couldas, and wouldas that befuddle our brains and creep into our dreams, always remember to make room to shoot what you love. It’s the only way to keep your heart beating as a photographer.” ― Joe McNally, The Moment It Clicks: Photography Secrets from One of the World’s Top Shooters
“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever… It remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.” – Aaron Siskind
“Taking pictures is savoring life intensely every hundredth of a second.” – Mark Riboud
“The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.” – Andy Warhol
“When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.” – Alfred Eisenstaedt
“Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.” – Berenice Abott
“In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.” — Alfred Stieglitz
“It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are.” — Paul Caponigro
“If the photographer is interested in the people in front of his lens, and if he is compassionate, it’s already a lot. The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.” — Eve Arnold
“I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.” — Diane Arbus
“The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.” — Elliott Erwitt
“Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.” — Yousuf Karsh
“Great photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.” — Peter Adams
“Character, like a photograph, develops in darkness.” — Yousuf Karsh
“The illusion of knowledge is more detrimental to growth than ignorance, because once you think you know something, the questioning stops.” — Jerry Uelsmann
“A better camera won’t do a thing for you if you don’t have anything in your head or in your heart.” — Arnold Newman
“My best work is almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.” – Sam Abell
“We do not take pictures, we are taken by pictures.” – Ernst Haas
“We each have to find our own way. It’s a process that involves indecision, loneliness and uncertainty. There is no path and no road signs, encouraging words may be few, if any. If you choose this path, your rewards will be fleeting moments of intense joy and exquisite awareness. Those working in safer more predictably structured endeavors will have no idea what they miss or what we are talking about.” – Jay Maisel
“Photography is only a tool to see life, and how you embrace life is how you photograph it.” – Don McKay
“To take photographs means to recognize — simultaneously and within a fraction of a second — both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one’s head, one’s eye and one’s heart on the same axis.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson
“I don’t think you can create luck. You’re either lucky or you’re not. I don’t know if it’s really luck or if it’s just curiosity. I think the main ingredient, or a main ingredient for photography is curiosity. If you’re curious enough and if you get up in the morning and go out and take pictures, you’re likely to be more lucky than if you just stay at home.” – Elliott Erwitt
“Chance is always there. We all use it. The difference is a poor photographer meets chance one out of a hundred times and a good photographer meets chance all the time.” – Brassai
“Available light is any damn light that is available!” – W. Eugene Smith
“You will never make a photograph that everyone likes, so make sure that you like every one of your photographs.” – Oliver Gagliani
“Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.” – Walker Evans
“The enemy of photography is the convention, the fixed rules of ‘how to do’. The salvation of photography comes from the experiment.” – Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
“Photograph the world as it is. Nothing’s more interesting than reality.” – Mary Ellen Mark
“You can find pictures anywhere. It’s simply a matter of noticing things and organizing them. You just have to care about what’s around you and have a concern with humanity and the human comedy.” – Elliott Erwitt
“Photography can light up darkness and expose ignorance.” – Lewis Hine
“Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase.” – Percy W. Harris
“The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer.” – Robert Mapplethorpe
“Be yourself. I much prefer seeing something, even it is clumsy, that doesn’t look like somebody else’s work.” – William Klein
“The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise don’t belong. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of separation.” – Susan Meiselas
“I love the people I photograph. I mean, they’re my friends. I’ve never met most of them or I don’t know them at all, yet through my images I live with them.” – Bruce Gilden
“Look, I’m not an intellectual – I just take pictures.” – Helmut Newton
“Emotion or feeling is really the only thing about pictures I find interesting. Beyond that is is just a trick.” – Christopher Anderson
“Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper… the photographer begins with the finished product.” – Edward Steichen
“Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.” – George Eastman
“If you are truly successful in capturing the pulse of life, then you can speak of a good photograph.” – Rene Burri
“Photography is a language more universal than words.” – Minor White
“There is a brief moment when all there is in a man’s mind and soul and spirit is reflected through his eyes, his hands, his attitude. This is the moment to record.” – Yousuf Karsh
Leave a Reply