Famous Quotes & Sayings

Ralph Gibson

The French have a different take on photography than Americans do. They consider photography to be absolutely parallel to literature. That often makes for a deeper perception of the work.

Ralph Gibson

I believe that the medium of photography prevails entirely as an act of faith in the souls of those who love and practice it. And so every photograph becomes another subtle variation on the theme of the medium itself.

Ralph Gibson

Even though fixed in time, a photograph evokes as much feeling as that which comes from music or dance. Whatever the mode - from the snapshot to the decisive moment to multi-media montage - the intent and purpose of photography is to render in visual terms feelings and experiences that often elude the ability of words to describe. In any case, the eyes have it, and the imagination will always soar farther than was expected.

Sean Penn

I still think photographers should be lashed out at. They should be put in a cage where you can poke them with a stick for a quarter. But not in a hostile way, just for giggles. They really are on the attack against mankind; it's a disease. They should be helped somewhere. But I'd still like to poke them with a stick.

Scoot McNairy

I had a love for photography, which of course rolled into cinematography.

Lincoln Kirstein

While photography to Cartier-Bresson is constantly an intuitive process, it is never purely instinctive. It is founded on continuous intellection, on ceaseless consideration during all moments previous to, or preparatory for, the pressing. It does not only operate in the blinding flash of a moment seized; it works all the time. The snatched picture merely cuts across the vein of observable incident or accident which is always beating, whether or not the fingers actually press.

Leo Baekeland

Well, it was kind of an accident, because plastic is not what I meant to invent. I had just sold photograph paper to Eastman Kodak for 1 million dollars.

Teju Cole

I often say I've spent more time with photography than I have with literature just in terms of hours.

Teju Cole

One of the difficulties of photography is that it is much better at being explicit than at being reticent.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Pay no heed to the average photographer's remarks upon "flat" and "weak" negatives. Probably he is flat, weak, stale, and unprofitable; your negative may be first-rate, and probably is if he does not approve of it.

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Do not call yourself an "artist-photographer" and make "artist-painters" and "artist-sculptors" laugh; call yourself a photographer and wait for artists to call you brother."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Though many painters and sculptors talk glibly of "going in for photography," you will find that very few of them can ever make a picture by photography; they lack the science, technical knowledge, and above all the practice. Most people think they can play tennis, shoot, write novels, and photograph as well as any other person - until they try."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Many photographers think they are photographing nature when they are only caricaturing her.

Sebastiao Salgado

What I want is the world to remember the problems and the people I photograph. What I want is to create a discussion about what is happening around the world and to provoke some debate with these pictures. Nothing more than this. I don't want people to look at them and appreciate the light and the palate of tones. I want them to look inside and see what the pictures represent, and the kind of people I photograph.

Sebastiao Salgado

I can be an artist a posteriori, not a priori. If my pictures tell the story, our story, human story, then in a hundred years, then they can be considered an art reference, but now they are not made as art. I'm a journalist. My life's on the road, my studio is the planet.

Sebastiao Salgado

I tell a little bit of my life to them, and they tell a little of theirs to me. The picture itself is just the tip of the iceberg.

Sebastiao Salgado

Of course, I won't be abandoning photography, because it is my life.

Sebastiao Salgado

We live in a society where we never prepare people to be a community.

Sebastiao Salgado

I discovered that close to half the planet is 'pristine.' We live in towns such as London, Paris or Sao Paulo and have the impression that all the pristine areas are gone, but they are not.

Sebastiao Salgado

I looked through a lens and ended up abandoning everything else.

Sebastiao Salgado

I have been photographing the portrait of an end of an era, as machines and computers replace human workers. What we have in these pictures is an archeology.

Sebastiao Salgado

When I was just starting out, I met Cartier-Bresson. He wasn't young in age but, in his mind, he was the youngest person I'd ever met. He told me it was necessary to trust my instincts, be inside my work, and set aside my ego. In the end, my photography turned out very different to his, but I believe we were coming from the same place.

Sebastiao Salgado

When you work fast, what you put in your pictures is what your brought with yoiu - your own ideas and concepts. When you spend more time on a project, you learn to understand your subjects. There comes a time when it is not you who is taking the pictures. Something special happens between the photographer and the people he is photographing. He realizes that they are giving the pictures to him.

Sebastiao Salgado

It's not the photographer who makes the picture, but the person being photographed.

Sebastiao Salgado

There comes a moment when it is no longer you who takes the photograph, but receives the way to do it quite naturally and fully.

Sebastiao Salgado

I am a former economist. I never went to photography school to learn photography.

Sebastiao Salgado

There are moments that you suffer a lot, moments you won't photograph. There are some people you like better than others. But you give, you receive, you cherish, you are there. When you are really there, you know when you see the picture later what you are seeing.

Sebastiao Salgado

I discovered photography completely by chance. My wife is an architect; when we were young and living in Paris, she bought a camera to take pictures of buildings. For the first time, I looked through a lens - and photography immediately started to invade my life.

Sebastiao Salgado

Of course I will continue photography. I love photography. But when you become old, it's too much.

Sebastiao Salgado

As in any person's life, there have been difficult moments: I have a son with Down's syndrome; through my photography, I have witnessed all manner of human degradation. But there have also been very happy moments.

Sebastiao Salgado

Most of the information we now get is through television and is mutilated. Photography offers the opportunity to spend much more time on a topic. It's relatively cheaper medium, and can allow a photographer really to live in another place, show another reality, get closer to the truth.

Sebastiao Salgado

...my way of photographing is my way of life. I photograph from my experience, my way of seeing things...

Sebastiao Salgado

I have tried to bring about better communication between people. I believe that humanitarian photography is like economics. Economy is a kind of sociology, as is documentary photography.