Famous Quotes & Sayings

Richard Avedon

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

And 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. I know that the accident of my being a photographer has made my life possible.

Richard Avedon

My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.

Ryan Lewis

I love history, cultural and religious studies, philosophy, photography and traveling.

Ryan McGinley

I know that my mind is so A.D.D., and I want instant gratification - and photography can provide me with that - but at some point, I want to make an independent feature.

Rene Magritte

Everything that is visible hides something that is invisible.

Thomas F. Wilson

I was an artistic dilettante for a while, in photography and collage and the visual arts.

Robert Barry

I don't really use still photography very much anymore except to document my work.

Richard Gere

His Holiness [the Dalai Lama] has told me, urgently and repeatedly, that he thinks my photographs are crap. His exact words were, 'These photos are of poor quality. Why is there no sharp focus? There is no clarity!' I said, 'But your Holiness, it's Goyaesque.' And he said, 'No! It's out of focus!'

Ruth Bernhard

Light is my inspiration. My photographic images search for dimensions that words cannot touch- the result of intense responses to personal experiences. I do not wish to "record," but rather to touch upon the illusive meanings which I perceive and try to comprehend in this limitless universe.

Ruth Bernhard

Photography is art when it's used by an artist.

Ruth Bernhard

Never ever say the word shoot when you are taking a picture with a camera because a camera is not a violent weapon.

Ruth Bernhard

My quest, through the magic of light and shadow, is to isolate, to simplify and to give emphasis to form with the greatest clarity. To indicate the ideal proportion, to reveal sculptural mass and the dominating spirit is my goal.

Ruth Bernhard

What the human eye sees is an illusion of what is real. The black and white image transforms illusions into another reality.

Ruth Bernhard

I expect photographs to find me. I never thought of looking for them. I instinctively put them there. My intellect had nothing to do with it.

Ruth Bernhard

You have to follow your instinct all the time. Otherwise you don't make it.

Ruth Bernhard

Every day I am aware of the flow and constant change; perhaps I am at the edge of discovering what more our bodies might be able to teach about the spirit of life. At least, I am always exploring and trying to understand our relationship to the whole universe.

Ruth Bernhard

For me, the creation of a photograph is experienced as a heightened emotional response, most akin to poetry and music, each image the culmination of a compelling impulse I cannot deny. Whether working with a human figure or a still life, I am deeply aware of my spiritual connection with it. In my life, as in my work, I am motivated by a great yearning for balance and harmony beyond the realm of human experience, reaching for the essence of oneness with the Universe.

Ruth Bernhard

If you can't make the image bigger or more important than what you see, then don't push the button

Ruth Bernhard

Woman has been the target of much that is sordid and cheap, especially in photography. To raise, to elevate, to endorse with timeless reverence the image of woman, has been my mission.

Ruth Bernhard

Light is my inspiration, my paint and brush. It is as vital as the model herself. Profoundly significant, it caresses the essential superlative curves and lines. Light I acknowledge as the energy upon which all life on this planet depends.

Ruth Bernhard

There is no such thing as taking too much time, because your soul is in that picture.

Ruth Bernhard

A person cannot learn to be a photographer. He can only cultivate what he already has. I try to make people aware that they have something very precious to cultivate.

Ruth Bernhard

If youre not interested in life, then photography has no meaning

Ruth Bernhard

Fall in love. Every day. With everything. With life. If you can fall in love, you can be a photographer. I think that is absolutely essential.

Ruth Bernhard

I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help.

Ruth Bernhard

If you are not passionately devoted to an idea, you can make very pleasant pictures but they won't make you cry.

Rudolf Arnheim

The ambition of instantaneous photography... was that of preserving the spontaneity of action and avoiding any indication that the presence of the picture taker had a modifying influence on what was going on.

Thomas Merton

The camera does not know what it takes; it captures materials with which you reconstruct, not so much what you saw as what you thought you saw. Hence the best photography is aware, mindful, of illusion and uses illusion, permitting and encouraging it - especially unconscious and powerful illusions that are not usually admitted on the scene.

Tim Walker

When I was at college, the idea of fashion was more immediate to me, whereas art photography, the depth of it, was a different thing. Storytelling - fanciful storytelling - can only be told through fashion photography. It's the perfect way to play with fantasy and dreams.

Tim Walker

The point of fashion is that you take the picture you want. And fashion is the only photography that allows fantasy, and I'm a fantasist.

Tim Walker

I don't want to sound mystical but sometimes when you take a picture - when the sets are in place - then something takes over and leads you. It's this sense of extraordinary luck and chance. The shoot is blessed and charmed, and you make pictures that you couldn't in your wildest dreams have imagined. That is the magic of photography.

Tim Walker

I like capturing stuff that is disappearing - that’s the point of photography. What I am photographing is an imaginary place that never existed, but is connected to something that has already been.