Photography has produced some of the most quotable reflections on seeing, time, truth, and light of any art form. This is partly because photographers think obsessively about what they are doing and why, and partly because the medium sits at a strange intersection between capturing reality and interpreting it.
The quotes below are organized by theme. Each section opens with the idea the quotes explore, because a quote without context is decoration. With context, it becomes a way of seeing.
On the Act of Seeing: What Photography Is Really About
“To photograph is to hold one’s breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality.”
— Henri Cartier-Bresson
“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”
— Dorothea Lange
“Photography is the art of frozen time… the ability to store emotion and feelings within a frame.”
— Meshack Otieno
“You don’t take a photograph, you make it.”
— Ansel Adams
“Photography is the story I fail to put into words.”
— Destin Sparks
“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you, the less you know.”
— Diane Arbus
“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.”
— Dorothea Lange
“In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.”
— Alfred Stieglitz
“I just think it’s important to be direct and honest with people about why you’re photographing them and what you’re doing. After all, you are taking some of their soul.”
— Mary Ellen Mark
On Light: The Photographer’s Raw Material
“Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography.”
— George Eastman
“Photography is the 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
“What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”
— Karl Lagerfeld
“There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment.”
— Robert Frank
“The negative is comparable to the composer’s score and the print to its performance.”
— Ansel Adams
“You don’t make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.”
— Ansel Adams
“When you photograph a face… you photograph the soul behind it.”
— Jean-Luc Godard
On Composition and the Decisive Moment
“Composition should be a constant of preoccupation, being a simultaneous coalition, an organic coordination of visual elements.”
— Henri Cartier-Bresson
“A good photograph is knowing where to stand.”
— Ansel Adams
“If your pictures aren’t good enough, you’re not close enough.”
— Robert Capa
“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.”
— Ansel Adams
“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place.”
— Elliott Erwitt
“The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?”
— Edward Weston
“If you start cutting or cropping a good photograph, it means death to the geometrically correct interplay of proportions.”
— Henri Cartier-Bresson
“Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.”
— Imogen Cunningham
On Truth and Reality
“The camera cannot lie, but it can be an accessory to untruth.”
— Harold Evans
“If you scrutinize reality closely enough, if in some way you really, really get to it, it becomes fantastic.”
— Diane Arbus
“The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.”
— Elliott Erwitt
“A photograph is usually looked at, seldom looked into.”
— Ansel Adams
“Reality is the finest source of photography, for reality is richer than any human fantasy.”
— Alfred Eisenstaedt
“The thing that’s important to know is that you never know. You’re always sort of feeling your way.”
— Diane Arbus
“I don’t trust words. I trust pictures.”
— Gilles Peress
On Time, Memory, and What Photographs Preserve
“A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels about what is being photographed in the deepest sense, and is, thereby, a true expression of what one feels about life in its entirety.”
— Ansel Adams
“The camera is a machine that makes the invisible visible.”
— Dorothea Lange
“Photography suits the temper of this age, of feelings cut off from their roots, of the posthumous nostalgia which tenderly romanticizes images of the vanished past.”
— Susan Sontag
“All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability.”
— Susan Sontag
“In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a leitmotiv.”
— Henri Cartier-Bresson
“Photographs open doors into the past, but they also allow a look into the future.”
— Sally Mann
On Learning, Practice, and Getting Better
“Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst.”
— Henri Cartier-Bresson
“It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like; it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are.”
— Paul Caponigro
“I have a passion for teaching people how to see.”
— Lisette Model
“Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.”
— Marc Riboud
“The best photograph is one that conveys something to a person that he’d never seen before.”
— Berenice Abbott
“To the complaint, ‘There are no people in these photographs,’ I respond, ‘There are always two people: the photographer and the viewer.’”
— Ansel Adams
“Photography is not about cameras, gadgets and gizmos. Photography is about photographers. A camera didn’t make a great picture any more than a typewriter wrote a great novel.”
— Peter Adams
On Courage, Vulnerability, and Getting Close
“Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.”
— Henri Cartier-Bresson
“I am not interested in shooting new things. I am interested to see things new.”
— Ernst Haas
“The best images are the ones that retain their strength and impact over the years, regardless of the number of times they are viewed.”
— Anne Geddes
“Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.”
— Matt Hardy
“Photography is the only language that can be understood anywhere in the world.”
— Bruno Barbey
“Photography is the poetry of our time.”
— Berenice Abbott
On Portrait Photography and Humanity
“The portrait I do of you is always somewhat a portrait of me.”
— Richard Avedon
“In my photography, color and form are less important than the subjects. I try to make people aware of their lives, their beauty, their dignity.”
— Sebastian Salgado
“A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.”
— Edward Steichen
“I work from awkwardness. By that I mean I don’t like to arrange things if I am taking a picture. I don’t like to direct very much.”
— Diane Arbus
“A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.”
— Eudora Welty
“I want my photographs to be seen and I want them to provoke some kind of emotion.”
— Steve McCurry
On Patience and the Right Moment
“A photographer must be prepared to catch and hold on to those elements which give distinction to the subject or lend it enigma.”
— Bill Brandt
“I always thought good photos were like good jokes. If you have to explain it, it just isn’t that good.”
— Anonymous
“The camera is my eye. Reality is nothing but light and shadow.”
— Man Ray
“For me, the camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.”
— Henri Cartier-Bresson
“The camera can photograph thought.”
— Dirk Bogarde
“I see no reason why the astounding sight of the sky should not make a deep impression upon us.”
— Vincent van Gogh
On Purpose: Why We Make Photographs at All
“Photography has not changed since its origin except in its technical aspects, which for me are not important.”
— Henri Cartier-Bresson
“Often while traveling with a camera I realize that I am seeing this moment twice: once through the lens and once with my heart.”
— Keith Carter
“What makes a great photograph? It is the one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it.”
— Irving Penn
“To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them they can never have.”
— Susan Sontag
“I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.”
— Diane Arbus
“Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.”
— Berenice Abbott
“Seeing is not enough, you have to feel what you photograph.”
— Andre Kertesz
On the Nature of the Art
“I wish more people felt that photography was an adventure the same as life itself and felt that their individual feelings were worth expressing.”
— Harry Callahan
“The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera.”
— W. Eugene Smith
“The photograph that lies in my mind is more beautiful than any I will ever take.”
— Anonymous
“What I feel about is the idea of life. Photography is a way of dealing with it.”
— Garry Winogrand
“I never really learned to use the camera; I use it by instinct.”
— Man Ray
“I like to relate photography to life, directly to what’s happening around us.”
— Burt Glinn
Short and Memorable
“Focus on the journey, not the destination. Joy is found not in finishing an activity but in doing it.”
— Greg Anderson
“One photo out of focus is a mistake, ten photos out of focus are an experimentation, one hundred photos out of focus are a style.”
— Anonymous
“Photography is a love affair with life.”
— Burk Uzzle
“Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter.”
— Oscar Wilde
“Photography is truth. And cinema is truth 24 times per second.”
— Jean-Luc Godard
“No place is boring, if you’ve had a good night’s sleep and have a pocket full of unexposed film.”
— Robert Adams
“I always preferred the photograph to be more beautiful than its subject.”
— Helmut Newton
“When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs.”
— Ansel Adams
“There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph.”
— Robert Heinecken
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