Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]
Memory is very important, the memory of each photo taken, flowing at the same speed as the event. During the work, you have to be sure that you haven’t left any holes, that you've captured everything, because afterwards it will be too late.
Alvin Langdon Coburn
[Photographer, b. 1882, Boston, Massachusetts, d. 1966, Wales.]
What we need in photography is more sincerity, more respect for our medium and less respect for its decayed conventions.
(1916)
Robert Capa (Endre Ern? Friedmann)
[Photographer, b. 1913, Budapest, Hungary, d. 1954, Thai Binh, Vietnam.]
Watch out for labels. They are reassuring but somebody’s going to stick one on you that you’ll never get rid of—“the little surrealist photographer.” You'll be lost—you’ll get precious and mannered. Take instead the label of “photojournalist” and keep the other thing for yourself, in your heart of hearts.
(Warning to Henri Cartier-Bresson)
Robert Frank
[Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1924, Zürich, Switzerland, lives in Mabou, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, and New York.]
The beginning—full of joy—energy for intuition. I learned to treat intuition as a trusted friend… on the road and inside me and in the darkroom.
(1962)
Walker Evans
[Photographer, b. 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1975, New Haven, Connecticut.]
When you are young you are open to influences, and you go to them, you go to museums. Then the street becomes your museum; the museum itself is bad for you. You don’t want your work to spring from art; you want it to commence from life, and that’s in the street now.
Weegee (Usher Fellig)
[Photographer, b. 1899, Zlothew near Lemberg, Austrian Galicia (now Zolochiv, Ukraine), d. 1968, New York.]
When you find yourself beginning to feel a bond between yourself and the people you photograph, when you laugh and cry with their laughter and tears, you will know you are on the right track.
Abelardo Morell
[b. 1948, Havana, Cuba, lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.]
There is a lot of social photography being done now to point to the untruth of photography. It’s getting very dull now. So, okay photography doesn’t tell the truth. So what? Everyone has known this forever.
Walker Evans
[Photographer, b. 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1975, New Haven, Connecticut.]
After all, I am getting older, and I feel that nobody should touch a Polaroid until he’s over sixty.
(On his experiments with the new SX-70 camera, 1974)
