PHOTOGRAPHY QUOTES III

quotations about photography

Photography quote

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

DOROTHEA LANGE

Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life


After all, the decisive quality in a photographer is the faculty of seeing certain things and being tempted by them.

GEORGE BERNARD SHAW

"George Bernard Shaw on Coburn's Photography", British Journal of Photography, 1906

Tags: George Bernard Shaw


The photograph has reversed the purpose of travel, which until now had been to encounter the strange and unfamiliar.... The world itself becomes a sort of museum of objects that have been encountered before in some other medium.

MARSHALL MCLUHAN

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

Tags: Marshall McLuhan


Photography knows how to authenticate its misrepresentations.

MASON COOLEY

City Aphorisms

Tags: Mason Cooley


The camera is a perfect companion. It makes no demands, imposes no obligations. It becomes your notebook and your reference library, your microscope and your telescope. It sees what you are too lazy or too careless to notice, and it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.

AARON SISKIND

attributed, The Amateur Photographer's Handbook


When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.

ALEKSANDAR HEMON

The Lazarus Project


You put your camera around your neck in the morning, along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you.

DOROTHEA LANGE

Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life


In order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes.

ROLAND BARTHES

Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography

Tags: Roland Barthes


The definition of a picture and the definition of photography is evolving in this truly digital space. Pictures can do things that pictures were never supposed to do.

RUSSELL ARMAND

"How the GIF Is Taking Over the World", Time, March 30, 2016


The act of photography is like going on a hunt in which photographer and camera merge into one indivisible function. This is a hunt for new states of things, situations never seen before, for the improbable, for information.

VILEM FLUSSER

Towards a Philosophy of Photography

Tags: Vilem Flusser


My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, or the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.

EDWARD WESTON

attributed, Pictures on a Page: Photojournalism and Picture Editing


The photograph extends and multiplies the human image to the proportions of mass-produced merchandise. The movie stars and matinee idols are put in the public domain by photography. They become dreams that money can buy.

MARSHALL MCLUHAN

Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man

Tags: Marshall McLuhan


Photography is a fickle art. You might start with the plan to shoot perfume bottles and end up doing corporate portraits. You might think at some point in your career that uber retouched imagery is your signature only to realize that the natural look that you though so boring is becoming a key ingredient in your style. Yes there are individuals who have a distinct style even when they are toddlers but for the rest of us -- human beings -- our art is forged by the gruesome practice of trail and fail.

ANNA DABROWSKA

"Why Professional Gear Is Not The Most Important Element in Photography", Fstoppers, April 20, 2016


Photography is an art of observation. It has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.

ELLIOTT ERWITT

attributed, "100 inspirational photography quotes", Shootzilla


It is in these moments of stillness where I can really appreciate the little hidden surprises at every turn, the small details that often go unnoticed as we hurtle through our days. When you stop, take a deep breath, and find your sense of wonder, you surprise yourself with the beauty that lies in your frame.

GUY SEBASTIAN

"Guy Sebastian shares his photography tips", Sunshine Coast Daily, April 26, 2016


To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.

SUSAN SONTAG

On Photography

Tags: Susan Sontag


It is a cruel, ironical art, photography. The dragging of captured moments into the future; moments that should have been allowed to be evaporate into the past; should exist only in memories, glimpsed through the fog of events that came after. Photographs force us to see people before their future weighed them down.

KATE MORTON

The House at Riverton


A photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second.

SALMAN RUSHDIE

The Ground Beneath Her Feet

Tags: Salman Rushdie


I love things like Instagram and Pinterest. I get so many ideas just by getting a daily digest of images from great photographers who I follow on social media. What that also does is it tells me which pictures stand out to me, then I can analyse them and try and work out what it is about that particular image that had me mesmerised for longer than a glance.

GUY SEBASTIAN

"Guy Sebastian shares his photography tips", Sunshine Coast Daily, April 26, 2016


The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.

JOHN BERGER

About Looking

Tags: John Berger