André Kertész
[Photographer, b. 1894, Budapest, Hungary, d. 1985, New York.]
Look, if you want to learn how to write, you study the alphabet and exercise every day. And in the end you have a very beautiful alphabet. But what are you expressing with the alphabet? Perfect technique but expressing nothing. This is what I call “calligraphic photographs á l’americaine.”
Henry Adams
[Writer and historian, b. 1838, Boston, Massachusetts, d. 1918, Washington, D.C..]
We sit in our native house, receiving visits, watching what goes on among the natives of the village, firing off our Kodaks at everything worth taking; but remember the photograph takes all the color, life and charm out of the tropics, and leaves nothing but a conventional hardness that might as well be Scotch or Yankee for all the truth it has.
(1890)
Ansel Adams
[Photographer, b. 1902, San Francisco, d. 1984, Carmel, California.]
You bring to photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.
Yousuf Karsh
[Photographer, b. 1908, Mardin, Armenia, d. 2002, Boston, Massachusetts.]
When one sees the residuum of greatness before one’s camera, one must recognize it in a flash. There is a brief moment when all that there is in a man’s mind and soul and spirit may be reflected through his eyes, his hands, his attitude. This is the moment to record. This is the elusive “moment of truth.”
Jo Ann Callis
[Photographer, b. 1940, Cincinnati, Ohio, lives in Los Angeles.]
I began by making pictures in interiors and about interiors—pictures about feelings, and emotions, and relations.
Julia Margaret Cameron
[Photographer, b. 1815, Calcutta, India, d. 1879, Kalutara, Ceylon.]
When I have had such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavored to do its duty towards them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man. The photograph thus taken has been almost the embodiment of a prayer.
Emmet Gowin
[Photographer, b. 1941, Danville, Virginia, lives in Princeton, New Jersey.]
The challenge of photography is to show the thing photographed so that our feelings are awakened and hidden aspects are revealed.
W. Eugene Smith
[Photographer, b. 1918, Wichita, Kansas, d. 1978, Tucson, Arizona.]
Most photographers seem to operate with a pane of glass between themselves and their subjects. They just can’t get inside and know the subject.
