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.
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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) ![](/images/rdquo.gif)
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...
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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.
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Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand.
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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.
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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.
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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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