"Too many photographers try too hard. They try to lift photography into the realm of Art, because they have an inferiority complex about their Craft. You and I would see more interesting photography if they would stop worrying, and instead, apply horse-sense to the problem of recording the look and feel of their own era."---- Jessie Tarbox Beals 

"The camera can photograph thought. It's better than a paragraph of sweet polemic."----Dirk Bogarde

"A hundredth of a second here, a hundredth of a second there--even if you put them end to end, they still only add up to one, two, perhaps three seconds, snatched from eternity."----Robert Doisneau

"The magic of photography is metaphysical. What you see in the photograph isn't what you saw at the time. The real skill of photography is organized visual lying".----Terence Donovan

"In America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it."----Susan Sontag

"Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man."----Edward Steichen

"I hate cameras. They are so much more sure than I am about everything."----John Steinbeck

"For half a century photography has been the "art form" of the untalented. Obviously some pictures are more satisfactory than others, but where is credit due? to the designer of the camera? To the finger on the button? To the law of averages?"----Gore Vidal

"There are a few photographers, and we are one of them, who still keep and develop the old skills that made good photography what it was in the past; and while we use machines and labor-saving devices for some purely routine procedures, the great bulk of our work depends on individual and creative handiwork. This is the reason good photographs cost more."----Louis Fabian Bachrach

"The pictures you want tomorrow, you have to take today."----Kodak advertisement

"Ultimately success or failure in photographing people depends on the photographer's ability to understand his fellow man."----Edward Weston

"In the business of portrait photography, one must combine the artist and the craftsman."----Louis Fabian Bachrach

"To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as of a precise organization of forms which give that event its proper expression. I believe that, through the act of living, the disc overy of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us which can mold us, but which can also be affected by us. A balance must be established between these two worlds - the one inside us and the one outside us. As a result of a constant reciprocal process, both these worlds come to form a single one. And it is this world that we must communicate."----Cartier Bresson

"Once you really commence to see things, then you really commence to feel things."----Edward J. Steichen

"Light glorifies everything. It transforms and ennobles the most commonplace and ordinary subjects. The object is nothing; light is everything."----Leonard Misonne

"A room hung with pictures is a room hung with thoughts."----Sir Joshua Reynolds

"I didn't want to tell the tree or weed what it was. I wanted it to tell me something and through me express its meaning in nature."----Wynn Bullock

"However much critics argue the value of specific works of art, the family portrait and family album quietly assume a significant place as a witness to our eyes."----Bill Thompson

"To cultivate the sense of the beautiful is one of the most effectual ways of cultivating an appreciation of the divine goodness. . . . The beauty seen is partly in him who sees it."----Bovee

"The best part of beauty is that which no picture can express."----Bacon

"Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter."----Oscar Wilde

"Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness."----Nathaniel Hawthorne

"If people only knew as much about painting as I do, they would never buy my pictures."----Edwin Landseer

"There is no art which affords less opportunity to execute expression than photography. Everything is concentrated in a few seconds, when after perhaps an hours seeking, waiting, and hesitation, the photographer sees the realization of his inward vision, and in that moment he has one advantage over most arts - his medium is swift enough to record his momentary inspiration. Right at the start I must confess that I have never met such a spontaneity of judgment in a man, who was a competent character reader, artist, and photographer in one person."----Sadakichi Hartmann

"To be free is not to be independent of any form, it is to be master of many forms."----Sidney Lanier

" Photography would have been settled a fine art long ago if we had not, in more ways than one, gone so much into detail. We have always been too proud of the detail of our work and the ordinary detail of our processes."----Henry Peach Robinson

"Impressionism has induced the study of what we see and shown us that we all see differently; it has done good to photography by showing that we should represent what we see and not what the lens sees . . . What do we see when we go to Nature? We see exactly what we are trained to see, and, if we are lucky, perhaps a little more but not much . . . We see what we are prepared to see and on that I base a theory that we should be very careful what we learn."----Henry Peach Robinson

"It is a great indiscretion for a photographer to show his model, his scenery, or his methods . . . he may make a heap of earth and a few stones in a back garden look like the top of a mountain, he may throw glamour of light and shade equal to Rembrandt's over his group, but he gives himself away body and soul if he takes credit for them. Better be content with the applause he is sure to get for the completed work, rather than expose all the mean little dodges that go towards building up a complete whole , that shows not only nature, but that nature has been filtered through the brain and fingers of an artist."----Henry Peach Robinson

"It is an old canon of art, that every scene worth painting must have something of the sublime, the beautiful, or the picturesque. By its nature, photography can make no pretensions to represent the first, but beauty can be represented by its means and picturesqueness has never had so perfect an interpreter."----Henry Peach Robinson

"It is only by loving nature, and going to her for everything, that good work can be done; but then we must look to her for the materials for pictures, not for pictures themselves. It is nature filtered through the mind and fingers of the artist that produces art, and the quality of the pictures depends on the fineness of that filter."----Henry Peach Robinson

"A good picture is equivalent to a good deed."----Vincent Van Gogh

"And why not draw for these times a portrait gallery? . . . A camera! A camera! Cries the century, that is the only toy. Come let us paint the agitator and the dilettante and the member of Congress and the college professor, the Unitarian minister, the editor of the newspaper, the fair contemplative girl, the aspirant for fashion & opportunities, the woman of the world who has tried & knows better . . . Good fun it would be for a master who with a delicate finger . . . should indicate all the lions by traits not to be mistaken yet that none should dare wag his finger whilst the shadow of each well known form flitted for a moment across the wall. So should we have at last if it were done well a series of sketches which would report to the next ages the color & quality of ours."----Ralph Waldo Emerson, October 21, 1841

"One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words."----Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

"Treat your friends as you do your pictures, and place them in their best light."----Jennie Jerome Churchill

"We artists are indestructible; even in a prison, or in a concentration camp, I would be almighty in my own world of art, even if I had to paint my pictures with my wet tongue on the dusty floor of my cell."----Pablo Picasso

"All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this—as in other ways—they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it."----John Berger

"I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term—meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching—there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster."----Ansel Adams

"That is the test of the true artist - always being dissatisfied and always doubting one's own ability----Rodin to Steichen

"My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me . . ."----Edward Weston

"Once the amateur's naive approach and humble willingness to learn fades away, the creative spirit of good photography dies with it. Every professional should remain always in his heart an amateur."----Alfred Eisenstaedt

"A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know."----Diane Arbus

"Simply look with perceptive eyes at the world about you, and trust to your own reactions and convictions. Ask yourself: "Does this subject move me to feel, think and dream? Can I visualize a print - my own personal statement of what I feel and want to convey - from the subject before me?"----Ansel Adams

One does not think during creative work, any more than one thinks when driving a car. But one has a background of years - learning, unlearning, success, failure, dreaming, thinking, experience, all this - then the moment of creation, the focusing of all into the moment. So I can make 'without thought,' fifteen carefully considered negatives, one every fifteen minutes, given material with as many possibilities. But there is all the eyes have seen in this life to influence me."----Edward Weston

"The painter constructs, the photographer discloses."----Susan Sontag

"Sometimes you can tell a large story with a tiny subject."----Eliot Porter

"The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera."----Dorothea Lange

"The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself."----Edward Steichen

"If there is a good thing about photography, it is that it can be easily enjoyed."----Snowdon

"If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough."----Robert Capa

"I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and at length the longing has been satisfied."----Julia Margaret Cameron

"I went to Marseille. A small allowance enabled me to get along, and I worked with enjoyment. I had just discovered the Leica. It became the extension of my eye, and I have never been separated from it since I found it. I prowled the streets all day, feeling very strung-up and ready to pounce, determined to "trap" life - to preserve life in the act of living. Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes."----Henri Cartier Bresson

"Only with effort can the camera be forced to lie: basically it is an honest medium: so the photographer is much more likely to approach nature in a spirit of inquiry, of communion, instead of with the saucy swagger of self-dubbed 'artists' ."----Edward Weston

"I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment. They become in a sense . . . symbolic of themselves. I often feel that people come to me to be photographed as they would go to a doctor or a fortune teller - to find out how they are."----Richard Avedon

"If I were just curious, it would be very hard to say to someone, 'I want to come to your house and have you talk to me and tell me the story of your life.' I mean people are going to say, 'You're crazy.' Plus they're going to keep mighty guarded. But the camera is a kind of license. A lot of people, they want to be paid that much attention and that's a reasonable kind of attention to be paid."----Diane Arbus

"Photography is the only 'language' understood in all parts of the world, and bridging all nations and cultures, it links the family of man. Independent of political influence - where people are free - it reflects truthfully life and events, allows us to share in the hopes and despairs of others, and illuminates political and social conditions. We become the eye-witnesses of the humanity and inhumanity of mankind . . ."----Helmut Gernsheim (Creative Photography, 1962)

"Photography is a system of visual editing. At bottom, it is a matter of surrounding with a frame a portion of one's cone of vision, while standing in the right place at the right time. Like chess, or writing, it is a matter of choosing from among given possibilities, but in the case of photography the number of possibilities is not finite but infinite."----John Szarkowski

"As I progressed further with my project, it became obvious that it was really unimportant where I chose to photograph. The particular place simply provided an excuse to produce work . . . you can only see what you are ready to see - what mirrors your mind at that particular time."----George Tice

"Now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. Such rules and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection . . ."----Edward Weston

"The daguerreotypes of all things are preserved . . . the imprints of all that has existed live, spread out through the diverse zones of infinite space."----Ernest Renan

"Those people live again in print as intensely as when their images were captured on the old dry plates of sixty years ago . . . I am walking in their alleys, standing in their rooms and sheds and workshops, looking in and out of their windows. And they in turn seem to be aware of me."----Ansel Adams (from preface of Jacob A Riis: Photographer & Citizen (1947))

"Life appears always fully present . . . a brief weary smile, a twitch of the hand, the fugitive pour of sun through clouds. And not a tool, save the camera, is capable of registering such complex ephemeral responses, and expressing the full majesty of t he moment. The impressionists tried in vain to achieve the notation. For, consciously or unconsciously, what they were striving to demonstrate with their effects of light was the truth of moments; impressionism has ever sought to fix the wonder of the h ere, the now. But the momentary effects of lighting escaped them while they were busy analyzing; and their 'impression' remains usually a series of impressions superimposed one upon the other. Stieglitz was better guided. He went directly to the instrument made for him."-----Paul Rosenfeld

"The camera is my tool. Through it I give reason to everything around me."----Andre Kertesz

"With the daguerreotype everyone will be able to have their portrait taken - formerly it was only the prominent; and at the same time everything is being done to make us all look exactly the same - so that we shall only need one portrait."-----Kierkegaar d (1854)

"Photographs are perhaps the most mysterious of all the objects that make up, and thicken, the environment we recognize as modern. Photographs really are experience captured, and the camera is the ideal arm of consciousness in its acquisitive mood."----Susan Sontag

"Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just by virtue of being photographed, touched with pathos. An ugly or grotesque subject may be moving because it has been dignified by the attention of the photographer. A beautiful subject can be the object of rueful feelings, because it has aged or decayed or no longer exists. All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person's (or thing's) mortality, vulnerability, mutability."----Susan Sontag

"A photograph is both a pseudo-presence and a token of absence. Like a wood fire in a room, photographs - especially those of people, of distant landscapes and faraway cities, of the vanished past - are incitements to reverie."----Susan Sontag

"The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say, 'There is the surface. Now think - or rather feel, intuit - what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks that way.' Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy . . . The very muteness of what is, hypothetically, comprehensible in photographs is what constitutes their attraction and provocativeness."----Susan Sontag

"There can't be an object and one who sees the object. That which sees and that which is seen are one."----Richard Hittleman

"In my view you cannot claim to have seen something until you have photographed it."----Emile Zola

"Your photography is a record of your living - for anyone who really sees. You may see and be affected by other people's ways, you may even use them to find your own, but you will have eventually to free yourself of them. That is what Nietzche meant when he said, 'I have just read Schopenhauer, now I have to get rid of him.' He knew how insidious other people's ways could be, particularly those which have the forcefulness of profound experience, if you let them get between you and your own personal vision."----Paul Strand

" . . . through this photographic eye you will be able to look out on a new light-world, a world for the most part uncharted and unexplored, a world that lies waiting to be discovered and revealed."----Edward Weston

"It's about time we started to take photography seriously and treat it as a hobby."----Elliott Erwitt

" 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 Sussman

"The anxiety in creating is overcome by the performance."----Rollo May

"The fundamental creative aspect . . . is to bring order to chaos."----Rollo May

"There is no particular virtue, it seems to me, in wasting time to find out for yourself what already has been discovered. One should save one's skill in research for what has not yet been discovered."----Mortimer J. Adler

"Then, through this photographic eye you will be able to look out on a new light-world, a world for the most part uncharted and unexplored, a world that lies waiting to be discovered and revealed"----Edward Weston

"Photography is a means of recording forever the things one sees for a moment."----Aaron Sussman

"Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase."----Percy W. Harris

"No photographer is as good as the simplest camera."----Edward Steichen

"Behold the Photographer! He hath been smitten by the Shutter Beetle, He Feareth the Light, and spendeth Many Wearisome Hours in the Room Called Dark. He soweth not, neither does he reap, but Seeketh Ever the Grain that is Fine. It has been Thus since the Beginning, even unto One Thousand One, One Thousand Two, One Thousand Three. Ask of the Populace - is he a man who Posesseth All his senses? Lo! the answer is in the Negative."----Richard Stafford

"The two most engaging powers of a photographer are to make new things familiar and familiar things new."----W. Thackeray

"Art produces new knowledge, new forms, often catastrophic in its endeavor to awaken people. The revelation in art comes as an immediate and unique experience. We look at a picture and it immediately reveals a new universe, a new form of experience." ----Rollo May

Compiled by Rebecca Baucus