Famous Quotes & Sayings

Sam Abell

As I have practiced it, photography produces pleasure by simplicity. I see something special and show it to the camera. A picture is produced. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs.

Sam Abell

Editorial photography has to be energetic and visually competitive.

Sam Abell

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.

Sam Abell

'Woman on the Plaza,' with its distinct horizon, snow-like surfaces, wintry wall, stunning sunlight, sharp shadows, and hurrying figure, would become the most biographical of my photographs - an abstract image of the landscape and life of northern Ohio where I grew up and first practiced photography.

Sam Abell

A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes.

Sam Abell

Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me.

Sam Abell

Above all, it's hard learning to live with vivid mental images of scenes I cared for and failed to photograph. It is the edgy existence within me of these unmade images that is the only assurance that the best photographs are yet to be made.

Sam Abell

How the visual world appears is important to me. I'm always aware of the light. I'm always aware of what I would call the 'deep composition.' Photography in the field is a process of creation, of thought and technique. But ultimately, it's an act of imaginatively seeing from within yourself.

Sam Abell

But there is more to a fine photograph than information. We are also seeking to present an image that arouses the curiosity of the viewer or that, best of all, provokes the viewer to think-to ask a question or simply to gaze in thoughtful wonder. We know that photographs inform people. We also know that photographs move people. The photograph that does both is the one we want to see and make. It is the kind of picture that makes you want to pick up your own camera again and go to work.

Sam Abell

My first priority when taking pictures is to achieve clarity. A good documentary photograph transmits the information of the situation with the utmost fidelity; achieving it means understanding the nuances of lighting and composition, and also remembering to keep the lenses clean and the cameras steady.

Sam Abell

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

Sam Abell

It matters little how much equipment we use; it matters much that we be masters of all we do use.

Sam Abell

My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.

Ronald Reagan

I like photographers-you don't ask questions.

Robertson Davies

Fiction is not photography, it's oil painting.

Robert Mapplethorpe

I think that it was a great advantage to go into photography not knowing much about it. Not thinking. I think one of the problems with many photographers today is that they never see for themselves, but just like everybody else...

Robert Mapplethorpe

I'm looking for the unexpected. I'm looking for things I've never seen before.

Robert Mapplethorpe

People don't have time to wait for somebody to paint their portraits anymore. The money is in photography.

Robert Mapplethorpe

I was a Catholic boy, I went to church every Sunday. A church has a certain magic and mystery for a child. It still shows in how I arrange things. It's always little altars.

Robert Mapplethorpe

With photography, you zero in; you put a lot of energy into short moments, and then you go on to the next thing.

Robert Mapplethorpe

If I had been born one or two hundred years ago, I might have been a sculptor, but photography is a very quick way to see, to make sculpture.

Robert Mapplethorpe

I never liked photography. Not for the sake of photography. I like the object. I like the photographs when you hold them in your hand.

Robert Mapplethorpe

If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up.

Robert Mapplethorpe

I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today's existence.

Robert Mapplethorpe

The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer.

Robert Mapplethorpe

If I am at a party, I want to be at the party. Too many photographers use the camera to avoid participating in things. They become professional observers.

Val Kilmer

It's the first time that I've ever had an art show based on a film, but it's a photography collage.

Susie Bright

Seeing lesbian photography is just the tip of my radicalized clitoris. I have modeled for, commissioned, published, and fought for these pictures, and answered threats against them. I've seen the feminist movement bring these pictures to life, and I've seen that same movement try to suppress the liberating results.

Taryn Simon

Photography threatens fantasy.

Taryn Simon

There is no truth in photography. One can't reproduce an absolute truth. That said, I don't see [my photographs] as being any less truthful than any other photographs.

Taryn Simon

...photography's history is bound to the mistake, to the accident.

Taryn Simon

The photograph doesn't claim to be a participant, or to know, or to be a club member of whatever it's documenting - photography is more demanding when it doesn't pretend to know.

Taryn Simon

I'm designing a seductive frame to attract an audience to a subject they would otherwise ignore. And that's what I do in all of my photography - give a stage to things that wouldn't normally receive that stage.