Margaret Bourke-White
[Photographer, b. 1904, New York, d. 1971, Darien, Connecticut.]

 If anybody gets in my way when I'm making a picture, I become irrational. I’m never sure what I’m going to do, or sometimes even aware of what I do—only that I want that picture. 
 It seems to me that while it is very important to get a striking picture of a line of smoke stacks or a row of dynamos, it is becoming more and more important to reflect that life that goes on behind these photographs. (1935) 
 The sights I have just seen [at Buchenwald] are so unbelievable that I don’t think I’ll believe them myself until I’ve seen the photographs... 
 In this experience of mine, there was one continuing marvel: the precision timing running through it all... by some special graciousness of fate I am deposited—as all good photographers like to be—in the right place at the right time. 
 Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand. 
 Photography is a very subtle thing. You must let the camera take you by the hand, as it were, and lead you into your subject. 
 Usually I object when someone makes overmuch of men’s work versus women’s work, for I think it is the excellence of the results which counts. 
 The element of discovery is very important. I don’t repeat myself well. I want and need that stimulus of walking forward from one new world to another. 
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