A collection of my favorite quotes about photography:
“The moment of expression is the culmination of the rejection of all other possibilities.” – Ruth Bernhard (1905-2006)
“It is the unexpected, hit-or-miss, instant impulse, these strange accidents, this surrealistic serendipity, out of which great photographs are born.” – Carolyn Kenmore (author)
“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” – Dorothea Lange (1895-1965)
“To me, 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 (1928- )
“The enemy of photography is the convention, the fixed rules of ‘how to do’. The salvation of photography comes from the experiment.” – Lazlo Maholy-Nagy
“Seeing is not enough; you have to feel what you photograph.” – Andre Kertesz (1894-1985)
“One doesn’t stop seeing. One doesn’t stop framing. It doesn’t turn off and turn on. It’s on all the time.” – Annie Leibovitz (1949- )
“One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are.” – Minor White (1908-1976)
“There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment the photographer is creative. Oop! The Moment! Once you miss it, it is gone forever.” – Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004)
“My work is inspired by my life. I express myself through my photographs. Everything that surrounds me provokes my feelings.” – Andre Kertesz (1894-1985)
“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 (1903-1991)
“We see in color all the time. Everything around us in in color. Black and white is therefore immediately an interpretation of the world, rather than a copy” – Michael Kenna (1953- )
“The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?” – Edward Weston (1886-1956)
“In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.” – August Sander (1876 – 1964)
And a few quotes about creativity:
“To make continuous discoveries in the visual world one need only look with eyes whose retinas, with each blink, become virgin again.” – Paul Dermee, 1927
“Artistic people create because they have to whether there are takers or not.”