Photography allows one to capture the world around them with the
press of a shutter. From a scientific perspective, it is the act of
recording light either electronically or chemically. However, this tells
us nothing about the heart of photography and what it truly means to us
on a personal level. We have assembled a list of 20 great quotes from
notable photographers, past and present, that answers the simple
question: “What is photography?”
“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you
have caught on film is captured forever… it remembers little things,
long after you have forgotten everything.”
—
Aaron Siskind
“Photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something
interesting in an ordinary place… I’ve found it has little to do with
the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”
—
Elliott Erwitt
“Photography to me is catching a moment which is passing, and which is true.”
—
Jacques-Henri Lartigue
“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.”
—
Diane Arbus
“Photography is a kind of virtual reality, and it helps if you can create the illusion of being in an interesting world.”
—
Steven Pinker
“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.”
—
Dorothea Lange
“Photography is a way to shape human perception.”
—
James Balog
“Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly complicated to make it really work.”
—
Martin Parr
“Photography is like a moment, an instant. You need a half-second to
get the photo. So it’s good to capture people when they are
themselves.”
—
Patrick Demarchelier
“Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.”
—
Henri Cartier-Bresson
“Photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.”
—
Henri Cartier-Bresson
“Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.”
—
Ansel Adams
“Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When
you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts.”
—
Garry Winogrand
“Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.”
—
Jean-Luc Godard
“Photography is pretty simple stuff. You just react to what you see, and take many, many pictures.”
—
Elliott Erwitt
“Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness.”
—
W. Eugene Smith
“Photography is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.”
—
Alfred Stieglitz
“Photography is a way of putting distance between myself and the
work which sometimes helps me to see more clearly what it is that I have
made.”
—
Andy Goldsworthy
“Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.”
—
Edward Steichen
“Photography is the easiest medium with which to be merely
competent. Almost anybody can be competent. It’s the hardest medium in
which to have some sort of personal vision and to have a signature
style.”
—
Chuck Close
