Famous Quotes & Sayings

Berenice Abbott

I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else. Excitement about the subject is the voltage which pushes me over the mountain of drudgery necessary to produce the final photograph.

Berenice Abbott

Imagine a world without photography, one could only imagine.

Berenice Abbott

The challenge for me has first been to see things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing ball. In a word, I have tried to be objective. What I mean by objectivity is not the objectivity of a machine, but of a sensible human being with the mystery of personal selection at the heart of it. The second challenge has been to impose order onto the things seen and to supply the visual context and the intellectual framework - that to me is the art of photography.

Berenice Abbott

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

Berenice Abbott

Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.

Berenice Abbott

Photography helps people to see.

Berenice Abbott

Like every other means of expression, photography, if it is to be utterly honest and direct, should be related to the life of the times - the pulse of today.

Berenice Abbott

Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.

Berenice Abbott

photography is not only drawing with light, though light is the indispensable agent of its being. It is modeling or sculpturing with light, to reproduce the plastic form of natural objects. It is painting with light ...

Berenice Abbott

Pictures are wasted unless the motive power which impelled you to action is strong and stirring.

Berenice Abbott

Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.

Berenice Abbott

Let us first say what photography is not. A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. It is not just a pretty picture, not an exercise in contortionist techniques and sheer print quality. It is or should be a significant document, a penetrating statement, which can be described in a very simple term-selectivity.

Berenice Abbott

I didn't decide to be a photographer; I just happened to fall into it.

Charlotte Rampling

The '60s in London obviously brought about the explosion of music, the Beatles especially, and then the Rolling Stones and other forms of music, and then fashion and photography and films - kitchen-sink dramas we called them at that time, which was our nouvelle vague in Britain, films that talk about real life.

James Nachtwey

I want my pictures to cut through political abstractions... and make a connection on a human level.

James Nachtwey

Photography can be perceived as the opposite of war.

James Nachtwey

I began after college, about 1972. I began to teach myself photography. I went to work for a local newspaper for four years as a kind of basic training.

James Nachtwey

I want to record history through the destiny of individuals who often belong to the least wealthy classes. I do not want to show war in general, nor history with a capital H, but rather the tragedy of a single man, of a family.

James Nachtwey

Photojournalists know the horrors of war can only be exposed at close range. Kodak Film.

James Nachtwey

Many people in this world do jobs that are dangerous and where their life is at risk and they feel that there is some kind of value to their job I guess that's how I feel about what I do. There is a social function to documentary photography that is very important and it requires people to take risks.

James Nachtwey

[Photography] puts a human face on issues which, from afar, can appear abstract or ideological or monumental in their global impact.

James Nachtwey

But everyone cannot be there, and that is why photographers go there - to show them, to reach out and grab them and make them stop what they are doing and pay attention to what is going on - to create pictures powerful enough to overcome the diluting effects of the mass media and shake people out of their indifference - to protest and by the strength of that protest to make others protest.

James Nachtwey

Is it possible to put an end to a form of human behavior which has existed throughout history by means of photography? The proportions of that notion seem ridiculously out of balance. Yet, that very idea has motivated me.

James Nachtwey

When the truth is spoken, it doesn't need to be adorned. It just needs to be simply stated, and often it only needs to be said once.

James Nachtwey

The greatest statesmen, philosophers, humanitarians ... have not been able to put an end to war. Why place that demand on photography?

James Nachtwey

I try to use whatever I know about photography to be of service to the people I'm photographing.

James Nachtwey

It is very hard to say where you're going until you get there. That kind of thing is based very much on instinct. As a photographer, one of the most important lessons I have learnt is that you have to learn to listen to and trust your own instinct. It has helped to guide me - this far at least.

James Nachtwey

For me, the strength of photography lies in its ability to evoke humanity. If war is an attempt to negate humanity, then photography can be perceived as the opposite of war.

James Nachtwey

I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated.

John Dykstra

I had done a lot of rock 'n' roll photography when I was in college. I was one of many photographers who worked for The Doors, Jefferson Airplane, and all of these rock 'n' roll bands.

John Dykstra

George Lucas wanted this moving camera for all of the photography in Star Wars. He was willing to take a risk with the concepts that I advanced with regard to ways for doing that.

John Berger

If everything that existed were continually being photographed, every photograph would become meaningless.

John Berger

Photography, because it stops the flow of life, is always flirting with death.