Photography quotes
3.1K quotes on this topic — from poets, philosophers, and thinkers across history.
"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."
"I like to make people a little uncomfortable. It encourages them to examine who they are and why they think the way they do."
"Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun."
"Color in a picture is like enthusiasm in life."
"Surrealism is destructive, but it destroys only what it considers to be shackles limiting our vision."
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Browse quotes that often appear alongside photography — connected by shared ideas and recurring themes.
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"The body says what words cannot."
"The desire to discover, the desire to move, to capture the flavor, three concepts that describe the art of photography."
"A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free."
"When van Gogh paints sunflowers, he reveals, or achieves, the vivid relation between himself, as man, and the sunflower, as sunflower, at that quick moment of time. His painting does not represent the sunflower itself. We shall never know what the sunflower itself is. And the camera will visualize the sunflower far more perfectly than van Gogh can."
"If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that's a good picture."
"The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do."
"A family's photograph album is generally about the extended family and, often, is all that remains of it."
"Photography is 10% inspiration and 90% moving furniture."
"Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment."
"I hate good taste. It's the worst thing that can happen to a creative person."
"Photographs open doors into the past, but they also alloq a look into the future"
"My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain."
"Anybody can direct a picture once they know the fundamentals. Directing is not a mystery, it's not an art. The main thing about directing is: photograph the people's eyes."
"Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?"
"There are two dirty words in photography, one is art, the other is good taste"
"Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs."
"Never stop looking, no matter where you are, everywhere there are good photographs"
"I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term - meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching - there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster."
"I was in the right place at the right time."
"There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment. This kind of photography is realism. But realism is not enough - there has to be vision, and the two together can make a good photograph."
