What Is Street Photography?

Street photography is a genre of photography that focuses on capturing candid moments in public places, typically streets, parks, or urban environments. It aims to document the everyday life of people, portraying the essence of society and its surroundings. Unlike studio photography, street photography embraces spontaneity and the unexpected, providing a glimpse into the authenticity of human experiences.

The Art of Capturing the Moment

Street photography requires a keen eye, quick reflexes, and a deep understanding of the environment. Photographers must be observant, anticipating and capturing fleeting moments that tell compelling stories. It’s not just about clicking the shutter; it’s about encapsulating emotions, interactions, and narratives within a single frame.

Inspiring Street Photography Quotes

Here are some inspiring street photography quotes from renowned street photographers that shed light on the essence of this captivating art form:

“Photography is the art of observation.” – Elliot Erwitt

Elliot Erwitt beautifully encapsulates the essence of street photography. It’s all about keenly observing the world around us, discovering beauty in the mundane, and freezing those moments forever.

“In street photography, you have to be quick, anticipate, and capture the moment.” – Daido Moriyama

Daido Moriyama highlights the importance of being agile and responsive in street photography. The ability to anticipate and adapt quickly is crucial to capturing those decisive moments that make street photography so captivating.

“Street photography is a way of finding myself in the chaos of the city.” – Alex Webb

Alex Webb beautifully expresses how street photography serves as a means of self-discovery amidst the bustling chaos of urban environments. It allows photographers to connect with their surroundings and uncover hidden narratives.

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place.” – Joel Meyerowitz

Joel Meyerowitz emphasizes that street photography is not just about extraordinary subjects but also about finding beauty and intrigue in the ordinary. It encourages photographers to seek out unique perspectives and stories in everyday life.

“The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.” – Elliott Erwitt

Elliott Erwitt reminds us that photography has the power to communicate emotions and narratives without the need for words. Street photography allows us to tell stories through visual imagery, capturing the essence of a moment in a single frame.

“Street photography is like life itself – unpredictable, fascinating, and full of stories waiting to be told.” – Matt Stuart

Matt Stuart beautifully compares street photography to life, highlighting its unpredictability and the wealth of captivating stories that unfold in the streets. It encourages photographers to embrace the spontaneity and embrace the richness of everyday life.

“I don’t shoot what it looks like, I shoot what it feels like.” – David Alan Harvey

David Alan Harvey emphasizes the importance of capturing the emotions and atmosphere of a scene rather than merely focusing on its visual appearance. Street photography allows photographers to evoke feelings and create a sensory experience for viewers.

“The best camera is the one that’s with you.” – Chase Jarvis

Chase Jarvis emphasizes that the most important aspect of photography is not the gear but the act of being present and ready to capture the moment. Street photography celebrates the accessibility and spontaneity of the craft, reminding us that great shots can be taken with any camera.

“A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart, and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it.” – Irving Penn

Irving Penn beautifully describes the impact of a powerful photograph. Street photography has the ability to convey truths, evoke emotions, and provoke meaningful introspection. It has the power to inspire change and transform the viewer’s perspective.

“Photography is an art of observation. It has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” – Elliott Erwitt

Elliott Erwitt’s quote reminds us that street photography is not solely about the subjects we capture but about our unique perspective as photographers. It encourages us to see the world with a discerning eye and to find beauty in unexpected places.

The Impact of Street Photography

Street photography has a profound impact on both photographers and viewers alike. It serves as a visual documentation of our society, reflecting the diversity, struggles, and triumphs of everyday life. Street photographs can evoke empathy, challenge preconceived notions, and provoke thought. They have the power to transcend cultural boundaries, capturing shared human experiences and sparking conversations.

Street photography also inspires creativity and encourages individuals to explore their surroundings with a fresh perspective. It celebrates the beauty of fleeting moments, trains the eye to notice details often overlooked, and nurtures a deeper appreciation for the world around us.

Conclusion

Street photography is a captivating art form that allows us to experience the essence of everyday life through visual storytelling. The quotes mentioned above provide valuable insights into the world of street photography, inspiring photographers to observe, capture, and tell stories through their lenses. Emphasizing the art of observation, the power of anticipation, and the ability to find beauty in the ordinary, these quotes remind us of the unique and transformative nature of street photography.

In conclusion, street photography quotes serve as a source of inspiration and guidance for photographers seeking to explore the world through their lenses. They capture the essence of this captivating art form, reminding us of the importance of observation, storytelling, and the ability to find beauty in the mundane. So grab your camera, hit the streets, and let these quotes ignite your passion for capturing the fleeting moments that define our urban landscapes.

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

What equipment do I need for street photography?

Street photography can be done with a wide range of cameras, from professional DSLRs to compact cameras or even smartphones. The key is to have a camera that you are comfortable with and that allows you to capture the moments quickly and discreetly.

Are there any legal issues with street photography?

Laws regarding street photography may vary from one country or region to another. It’s important to familiarize yourself with the local laws and regulations regarding photography in public spaces. Generally, if you’re photographing people in public places where there is no expectation of privacy, you are within your rights as a photographer.

How do I approach strangers for street photography?

When approaching strangers for street photography, it’s essential to be respectful and considerate. 

Explain your intentions, ask for permission if necessary, and engage in a friendly conversation. Building a rapport with your subjects can result in more authentic and compelling photographs.

How can I improve my street photography skills?

Improving your street photography skills takes practice and patience. Experiment with different techniques, compositions, and perspectives. Study the work of renowned street photographers, attend workshops or photography meetups, and most importantly, keep exploring and capturing the world around you.

What are some famous street photographers to follow for inspiration?

There are many influential street photographers whose work can inspire and educate. Some notable names include Henri Cartier-Bresson, Garry Winogrand, Vivian Maier, Mary Ellen Mark, and Martin Parr. Follow their work and explore their unique approaches to street photography.

Afterword

We hope that you find this article helpful to mount your metal prints. Thank you for reading and you’re always free to leave a comment. If you find this article interesting, consider checking out one of our recently published posts. A few of them showcase advancements in technology such as AI Art Generators. On the other hand, if you’re looking towards Photography, we also offer great articles for your inspiration. We also have multiple articles that talk about the various printing mediums for wall art. May these articles give you inspiration for your next print!

Find them here:

AI Art Generators : Img2Img
Stable Diffusion Tips and Tricks
Stable Diffusion : AI Art Generator Spotlight
The Printing Mediums of Wall Art
The Top Food Photography Trends to Try Now
40 Daido Moriyama Quotes to Improve your Street Photography
The Beauty of Everyday Life: Street Photography Tips and Techniques
46 Garry Winogrand Quotes for Better Street Photography

We enjoy reading your comments and insights with our posts! Should you have any questions or concerns, feel free to leave them below! -Mark

The post Inspiring Street Photography Quotes appeared first on Photogpedia.

Below, we’ve listed 40 of the best quotes from the legendary documentary photographer, which are sure to inspire, motivate, and help take your photography to the next level.

For over 50 years Parr has been capturing the quirkiness and beauty in everyday life. He is known for his candid photography, which he believes “adds an extra dimension” to his work.

His photographs are instantly recognizable for their use of color, and witty style that is compellingly beautiful and subtly humorous.

Parr himself defines his photography as “a mixture of documentary observation and staged comment.”

If you enjoy the article or find it helpful, then don’t forget to share it with others through the usual channels (social media, forums, websites, etc) and check out Headshots.

Martin Parr Quotes

From the moment the tourist enters the site, everyone has to be photographed in front of every feature of note… The photographic record of the visit has almost destroyed the very notion of actually looking. 

Photography is the simplest thing in the world, but it is incredibly complicated to make it really work. 

I accept that all photography is voyeuristic and exploitative, and obviously I live with my own guilt and conscience. It’s part of the test and I don’t have a problem with it.

All types of photography are important. For me, vernacular photography is essential as it provides a record of a moment, of important events in peoples’ lives, whereas many documentary or artistic photos are produced for a specific purpose. There is an urgency in vernacular photography that you don’t necessarily feel in professional photography.

Fashion pictures show people looking glamorous. Travel pictures show a place looking at its best, nothing to do with the reality. In the cookery pages, the food always looks amazing, right? Most of the pictures we consume are propaganda.

When a mother takes pictures of her children on the beach, she doesn’t take herself for an artist; she does it for love, which is an excellent reason, from my point of view. 

Everyone is a photographer now, remember. That’s the great thing about photography. 

Quotes on Photography Style

I am what I photograph. 

With photography, I like to create a fiction out of reality. I try and do this by taking society’s natural prejudice and giving this a twist.

My black-and-white work is more of a celebration, and the color work became more of a critique of society.

We are drowning in images. Photography is used as a propaganda tool, which serves to sell products and ideas. I use the same approach to show aspects of reality.

My photography is an observation of the western world’s middle classes and their endless quest for material abundance. 

The fundamental thing I’m exploring constantly is the difference between the mythology of the place and the reality of it… Remember I make serious photographs disguised as entertainment. That’s part of my mantra. I make the pictures acceptable in order to find the audience but deep down there is actually a lot going on that’s not sharply written in your face. If you want to read it you can read it.

It is part of my agenda to take photos that can fit into all the outlets for photography, from the gallery wall to the magazine or newspaper page. That, to me, is using photography at its best.

Part of the role of photography is to exaggerate, and that is an aspect that I have to puncture. I do that by showing the world as I really find it.

Finding your Subjects

What interests me most is to take pictures of things people don’t really care about.

I try to photograph my own and society’s hypocrisy.

The idea of England in decline is very attractive.

If there is any jarring at all in my photographs, it’s because we are so used to ingesting pictures of everywhere looking beautiful.

I looked around at what my colleagues were doing, and asked myself, “What relationship has it with what’s going on?” I found there was a great distortion of contemporary life. Photographers were interested only in certain things. A visually interesting place, people who were either very rich or very poor, and nostalgia.

I am only photographing what is obvious, and part of my way of working is to tap into people’s prejudices and depict all aspects of things happening in today’s society. I give people an opportunity to air their prejudices, and if they want to say the working class is scruffy and dirty, then the pictures exist to illustrate that thesis. 

Photography is, by its nature, exploitative. It’s whether you use this process with a sense of responsibility or not. I feel that I do so. My conscience is clear.

I often think of what I photograph as a soap opera, where I am waiting for the right cast to fall into place.

Quotes on Photography Technique

I go straight in very close to people and I do that because it’s the only way you can get the picture. You go right up to them. Even now, I don’t find it easy. I don’t announce it. I pretend to be focusing elsewhere. If you take someone’s photograph it is very difficult not to look at them just after. But it’s the one thing that gives the game away. I don’t try and hide what I’m doing – that would be folly.

When I first started learning how to take photographs, you had to spend the first six months figuring out what an f-stop was. Now you just go and take pictures. Nobody thinks about technical issues anymore because cameras or camera phones take care of that automatically.

I see things going on before my eyes and I photograph them as they are, without trying to change them. I don’t warn people beforehand. That’s why I’m a chronicler. I speak about us and I speak about myself. 

I love playing the game of fashion photography without knowing what the rules are. 

Martin Parr’s Tips for Better Photography

You have to take a lot of bad pictures. Dont’ be afraid to take bad pictures… You have to take a lot of bad pictures in order to know when you’ve got a good one.

The easy bit is picking up a camera and pointing and shooting. But then you have to decide what it is you’re trying to say and express. 

Unless it hurts, unless there’s some vulnerability there, I don’t think you’re going to get good photographs. 

Find something you are passionate about and shoot your way through this obsession with elegance and you will have a potentially great project. 

Get out there and do it. If it’s good, it will be seen. There is no such thing as a brilliant new contemporary photographer who is undiscovered.

What’s your Favorite Martin Parr Quote?

Have a favorite Martin Parr quote? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. Also, don’t forget to share it with others.

To see more of Martin Parr‘s photography, check out his image archive on Magnum Photos website.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Check out the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

Related Quote Articles:

• Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes
• Elliot Erwitt Quotes
• Saul Leiter Quotes
• The Best Street Photography Quotes

The post Martin Parr Quotes: Creating Fiction out of Reality appeared first on Photogpedia.

Leiter embraced photography with a painter’s eye and turned ordinary everyday moments into beautiful abstract color imagery.

Leiter made a living shooting fashion during the heyday of Harper’s Bazaar and Vogue. By the 1980s though, he had faded into obscurity and for many decades he lived and worked virtually unknown.

In 2006, Leiter enjoyed a remarkable revival with the release of his book, Saul Leiter: Early Color. The book was an overnight success and firmly established Leiter as an early pioneer of color photography.

Below we’ve listed 36 of our favorite Saul Leiter quotes to inspire and help take your photography to the next level.

If you find this article helpful, then we would be grateful if you could share it with other photographers through the usual channels (blogs, forums, social media, etc).

Saul Leiter Quotes

I may be old-fashioned. But I believe there is such a thing as a search for beauty – a delight in the nice things in the world. And I don’t think one should have to apologize for it.

Seeing is a neglected enterprise.

I think I’ve said this before many times – that photography allows you to learn to look and see. You begin to see things you had never paid any attention to. And as you photograph, one of the benefits is that the world becomes a much richer, juicier, visual place. Sometimes it is almost unbearable – it is too interesting. And it isn’t always just the photos you take that matters. It is looking at the world and seeing things that you never photograph that could be photographs if you had the energy to keep taking pictures every second of your life.

Some photographers think that by taking pictures of human misery, they are addressing a serious problem. I do not think that misery is more profound than happiness.

I have been told that some of my photographs maybe indicate that I am a painter.

Photography is about finding things. And painting is different – it’s about making something.

Everything is suitable to be photographed. Everything is a photograph.

Leiter on Photography Technique

Whatever complexity people find in the work that I do, must be there, because they find it. I have not set out to be complex.

My friend Henry [Wolf] once said that I had a talent for being indifferent to opportunities. He felt that I could have built more of a career, but instead I went home and drank coffee and looked out the window.

I didn’t try to communicate any kind of philosophy since I am not a philosopher. I am a photographer. That’s it.

I don’t have a philosophy. I have a camera. I look into the camera and take pictures. My photographs are the tiniest part of what I see that could be photographed. They are fragments of endless possibilities.

When we do not know why the photographer has taken a picture and when we do not know why we are looking at it, all of a sudden we discover something that we start seeing. I like this confusion.

I think when you take a photograph, if it turns out to be something good, there’s a kind of Zen element that takes place. It’s difficult to describe. People talk of controlling, but it’s not true. You can’t control the swirl of reality. If you’re very lucky, from time to time, you do something that is good.

I happen to believe in simple things and the beauty of simple things. I believe that the most uninteresting thing can be interesting.

Leiter on Finding Photos

I go out to take a walk, I see something, I take a picture. I take photographs. I have avoided profound explanations of what I do.

A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person.

The street is like a ballet. You never know what is going to happen.

There are the things that are out in the open and then there are the things that are hidden, and life has more to do, the real world has more to do with what is hidden.

I never thought of the urban environment as isolating. I leave these speculations to others. It’s quite possible that my work represents a search for beauty in the most prosaic and ordinary places. One doesn’t have to be in some faraway dreamland in order to find beauty. I realize that the search for beauty is not highly popular these days. Agony, misery and wretchedness, now these are worth perusing.

I take photographs in my neighbourhood. I think that mysterious things happen in familiar places. We don’t always need to run to the other end of the world.

A photographer’s gift to the viewer is sometimes the beauty in the overlooked ordinary.

Quotes on Equipment and Color

I liked different lenses for different times. I am fond of the telephoto lens, as I am of the normal 50 mm lens. I had at one point a 150 mm lens and I was very fond it. I liked what it did.

I think the art world is afflicted with mistaken notions during certain periods, and they become very prevalent, and people take them very seriously. But eventually they’re abandoned and seen as very silly and unimportant. Color has always aroused suspicion in the minds of certain people.

I experimented a lot. Sometimes I worked with a lens that I had when I might have preferred another lens. I think Picasso once said that he wanted to use green in a painting but since he didn’t have it he used red. Perfection is not something I admire. A touch of confusion is a desirable ingredient.

I find it strange that anyone would believe that the only thing that matters is black and white. It’s just idiotic. The history of art is the history of colour. The cave paintings had colour…

Saul Leiter Quotes for Better Photography

I admired a tremendous number of photographers, but for some reason I arrived at a point of view of my own.

If I’d only known which [photographs] would be very good and liked, I wouldn’t have had to do all the thousands of others.

I believe that there is something in you that strives for order, and within that order there’s a certain kind of mishmoshy confusion, and you bring this mishmoshy confusion, if you succeed, into some kind of order. There’s an element of control, and there’s also an element that just happens – if you’re very lucky. Artists need luck.

In order to build a career and to be successful, one has to be determined. One has to be ambitious. I much prefer to drink coffee, listen to music and to paint when I feel like it… Maybe I was irresponsible. But part of the pleasure of being alive is that I didn’t take everything as seriously as one should.

Check your Ego

I spent a great deal of my life being ignored. I was always very happy that way. Being ignored is a great privilege. That is how I think I learnt to see what others do not see and to react to situations differently. I simply looked at the world, not really prepared for anything.

We live in a world full of expectations, and if you have the courage, you ignore the expectations. And you can look forward to trouble.

I’m sometimes mystified by people who keep diaries. I never thought of my existence as being that important.

I am not immersed in self-admiration. When I am listening to Vivaldi or Japanese music or making spaghetti at three in the morning and realize that I don’t have the proper sauce for it, fame is of no use. The other way to put it is that I don’t have a talent for narcissism. Or, to put it yet another way, the mirror is not my best friend.

I’ve never been overwhelmed with a desire to become famous. It’s not that I didn’t want to have my work appreciated, but for some reason – maybe it’s because my father disapproved of almost everything I did – in some secret place in my being was a desire to avoid success.

I have a deep-seated distrust and even contempt for people who are driven by ambition to conquer the world… those who cannot control themselves and produce vast amounts of crap that no one cares about. I find it unattractive. I like the Zen artists: they’d do some work, and then they’d stop for a while.

The cream does not always rise to the surface. The history of art is a history of great things neglected and ignored and bad and mediocre things being admired. As someone once said “life is unfair.” There are always changes and revisions of the appreciation of art, artists, and photography and writers and on and on. The late art of Picasso is no good but then a revision takes place and then it becomes very good as the art records indicate. Things come and go.

What’s your Favorite Saul Leiter Quote?

Have a favorite Saul Leiter quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. Like the article? Share it with other photographers.

To learn more about Leiter photography, check out the Saul Leiter Foundation website. We also recommend watching the brilliant 2013 documentary, In No Great Hurry: 13 Lessons in Life with Saul Leiter.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Visit the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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• Ernst Haas Quotes
• William Egglestone Quotes
• Robert Frank Quotes
• Street Photography Quotes

The post 36 Saul Leiter Quotes: Lessons from the Pioneering Color Photographer appeared first on Photogpedia.

Robert Doisneau was a pioneering street photographer, who is best known for masterfully photographing scenes from everyday life on the streets of Paris. His work captured the beauty and absurdity of life and provides a remarkable portrait of Paris in the twentieth century.

Below we’ve listed 32 quotes from the master photographer to inspire, motivate and help your photography to the next level.

Robert Doisneau Quotes

The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street.

There are days when the simple act of seeing appears to be true happiness.

A photographer who made a picture from a splendid moment, an accidental pose of someone or a beautiful scenery, is the finder of a treaser.

Photography is very subjective. Photography is not a document on which a report can be made. It is a subjective document. Photography is a false witness, a lie.

The best photos, the ones that are remembered, are the ones that have first passed through the person’s mind before being restored by the camera.

People like my photos because they see in them what they would see if they stopped rushing about and took the time to enjoy the city.

The world that I was trying to show was a world where I would have felt at peace, where people would be pleasant, and where I would find the kindness I wished to receive. My photographs were proof that such world could exist.

I had fun throughout my lifetime, building my own small theater.

Doisneau on the Work

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.

For a photographer, the first 70 years are a bit difficult, but after that things get better.

When I first started to take photos I’d pull the black cloth over my head and feel totally secure in the knowledge that no one could see me.

Chance is the one thing you can’t buy. You have to pay for it and you have to pay for it with your life, spending a lot of time, you pay for it with time, not the wasting of time but the spending of time.

Why should I have to photograph in a foreign place when people there do it very well for themselves?

I’m not a collector at heart. I’m never tormented by the longing to possess things. I’m quite happy with my pictures. I’ve been cohabiting with them for years now and we know each other inside out, so I feel I’m entitled to say that pictures have a life and a character of their own. Maybe they’re like plants they won’t really flourish unless you talk to them. I haven’t gone that far – not yet anyway. Lots of them behave like good little girls and give me a nice smile whenever I walk past, but others are real bitches and never miss any opportunity to ruin my life. I handle them with kid gloves.

The advantage we have, compared to painters and writers, is that we never lose contact with the rough side of life. It is a lesson in humility and it keeps us from some pitfalls. But above all it nourishes us.

Life is short. Break the rules. Forgive quickly. Kiss slowly. Love truly. Laugh uncontrollably and never regret anything that made you smile!

Capturing Everyday Life

If you’re going to work in a life teeming with people you must have a few rock-hard principles to anchor you and you mustn’t dissipate your efforts. So I decided to stick to ordinary, everyday life for my source material and steer clear of picturesque effects. When I had to choose between a member of some lunatic sect and a French polisher, I’d choose the French polisher.

I only feel at home in the sort of streets where you come across an old-age pensioner with a little white dog, a flower lady, a kid on roller skates, and a fat man, all atthe same time. I shall always be the last person left sauntering in the street.

I like people for their weaknesses and faults. I get on well with ordinary people. We talk. We start with the weather, and little by little we get to the important things. When I photograph them it is not as if I were examining them with a magnifying class, like a cold and scientific observer. It’s very brotherly. And it’s better, isn’t it, to shed some light on those people who are never in the limelight.

I like to think that the universe I have liked will continue on a little bit longer and then will dissolve slowly, gently after I die. Fading in and out, like in the cinema, where we are accustomed to a fade-out at the end. I accept a fade-out. But what I cannot conceive of is a “click” at the end. In the case of those I have liked who have passed away, we continue to read their books, we continue to look at their drawings, their photos. It seems to me that in this way they continue to walk a bit of the way with us. And it is perhaps for this reason that I have photographed the old Paris that I liked so much when I was twenty or thirty years old.

[On his famous photograph, Kiss by the Hôtel de Ville] We all realised that it represented a perfect fantasy. It encapsulates the world’s view of Paris as the city of love and freedom.

Doisneau Quotes for Better Photography

You know, they always say that the photographer is “a hunter of images.” That is a flattering image, the idea of a hunter, it’s virile, acquired power. Actually though, it isn’t that. We are really fishermen with hooks and lines.

If I knew how to take a good photograph, I’d do it every time.

The photographer must be absorbent, like a blotter, allow himself to be permeated by the poetic moment… His technique should be like an animal function… he should act automatically.

You’ve got to struggle against the pollution of intelligence in order to become an animal with very sharp instincts – a sort of intuitive medium – so that to photograph becomes a magical act, and slowly other more suggestive images begin to appear behind the visible image, for which the photographer cannot be held responsible.

I prefer my hesitations, my false paths, my stammering, to a preconceived idea.

I’m not that sure of myself. I start off with a story. I wait for the moment that fills me with wonder. Or I wait for some kind of miracle that that will always happen.

There is that moment when we are truly visionary. There, everything works tremendously well. But all this is only a part of that great game that puts us into a trance, into a state of receptivity. This trance doesn’t last long, however, because life always calls you back to its commands. There are always contingencies. But somehow, despite it all, the effect does last. I think that it could be classed as a feeling. For me it is a kind of “religion of looking.”

To Suggest, Not Tell

Nowadays people’s visual imagination is so much more sophisticated, so much more developed, particularly in young people, that now you can make an image which just slightly suggests something, they can make of it what they will.

If you take photographs, don’t speak, don’t write, don’t analyse yourself, and don’t answer any questions.

I don’t usually give out advice or recipes, but you must let the person looking at the photograph go some of the way to finishing it. You should offer them a seed that will grow and open up their minds.

You must not trample on other people’s secret gardens. To suggest is to create; to describe is to destroy.

What’s your Favorite Robert Doisneau Quote?

Have a favorite Robert Doisneau quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. If you’ve found the article helpful, then we would be grateful if you could share it with other photographers.

To learn more about Doisneau’s photography, visit the Robert Doisneau Foundation website.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Check out the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

Related Quote Articles:

• Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes
• Brassai Quotes
• Andre Kertesz Quotes
• Street Photography Quotes

The post 32 Robert Doisneau Quotes: The Theatre of Life appeared first on Photogpedia.

Jacques-Henri Lartigue Quotes

Photography is something you learn to love very quickly. I know that many, many things are going to ask me to have their pictures taken and I will take them all.

I have never taken a picture for any other reason than that at that moment it made me happy to do so.

It’s marvelous, marvelous! Nothing will ever be as much fun. I’m going to photograph everything, everything!

Photography is a magic thing. A thing that has mysterious odors, a little strange and frightening, something one quickly grows to love.

As a whole, I am interested in the symbolic, rather than the literal use of the camera.

One of my basic feelings is that the mind, and the heart alike, of the photographer must be dedicated to the glory, the magic, and the mystery of light. The mystery of time, the magic of light, the enigma of reality – and their interrelationships – are my constant themes and preoccupations.

The mystery of light [and] the enigma of time form the twin pivots around which all my work revolves. In addition… my work attempts to create a mythology for our contemporary world.

Photography to me is catching a moment which is passing, and which is true.

Jacques-Henri Lartigue on Art

Photography and writing are marvelous distractions from painting. I might even have found movies more interesting than photography. I tried it a bit, but not enough.

What’s so incredibly amusing with photography is that while seemingly an art of the surface, it catches things I haven’t even noticed. And it pains me not to have seen things in all their depth.

I take photographs with love, so I try to make them art objects. But I make them for myself first and foremost- that is important. If they are art objects at the same time, that’s fine with me.

..dissatisfaction with one’s self and dissatisfaction with the world – is necessary – it is one of the prime things that keeps the artist going on – that drives him – happiness, as such, must come in between times, as best it can.

I frequently attempt to show in my work, in various ways, the unreality of the “real” and the reality of the “unreal.” This may result, at times, in some disturbing effects. But art should be disturbing; it should make us both think and feel; it should infect the subconscious as well as the conscious mind; it should never allow complacency nor condone the status quo.

I have two pairs of eyes – one to paint and one to take photographs.

Lartigue Quotes for Better Photography

One shouldn’t be only two photographers but thousands.

I did not start out as a photographer but, instead, as a writer. Whether for good or ill, this fact has inspired and colored many of my concepts … Through photography I have also tried to tie together and further my active interests in painting, in poetry, in psychology, and in architecture. Whatever value my photography has, it is only because of these other interests.

I attempt, through much of my work, to animate all things – even so-called “inanimate” objects – with the spirit of man. The creative photographer sets free the human contents of objects; and imparts humanity to the inhuman world around him.

In all my work I have been animated with three convictions:

1) That there is no essential reason why the creative imagination cannot work with a ray of light acting upon a sensitized surface as effectively as it can with a brush laden with pigment.

2) That photography is one of the most authentic and integral modes of expression possible in the particular kind of world in which we live.

3) That in photography, as in the other arts, the quality of a man’s imagination is the only thing that counts – technique and technical proficiency mean nothing in themselves.

How can one not be moved by the harmony of colours nature offers us? As long as neither is too harsh nor too sharp, colour photography seems to me, because of a certain blurriness, to best be able to express charm and poetry – a poetry that can very well accommodate a touch of humour.

I think just about everything has been tackled, but it may be that things will be done again, only better and differently.

[Lartigue’s advice to Photographers:]

1) Never, never be lazy.
2) Know how to eat well; the right foods in small quantities.
3) Know how to sleep well; the sleep that comes after a good day’s work.
4) Know how to appreciate, really appreciate, any good art.
5) Know how to enjoy silence, as well as good music.
6) Open your ears to the ideas and suggestions of God.
7) Love God.

The golden rule is “work fast.” As for framing, composition, focus – this is no time to start asking yourself questions: you just have to trust your intuition and the sharpness of your reflexes.

Learning to Look and Imagination

Learn how to look, how to love. It’s the same with painting and writing.

I quite agree with you that the photographer who produces a photograph which is merely technically good, owes more to the discoveries of the laboratory technicians than to himself. However, the imagination transcends all technical perfection, and sometimes even converts a technical disadvantage to a further advantage.

Everything that I see must become personal; otherwise, it is dead and mechanical. Our only chance to escape the blight of mechanization, of acting and thinking alike, of the huge machine which society is becoming, is to restore life to all things through the saving and beneficent power of the human imagination.

You don’t go out to accidentally find something that’s going to make a good picture, but [instead you find it] in yourself, knowing already what you want to do… at least subconsciously if not consciously; you find the thing in so-called nature or so-called reality which corresponds to this preconceived, this pre-sensitized, concept, which is hidden somewhere in your imagination or your subconscious… You go out and find what you are prepared to see.

What’s your Favorite Jacques-Henri Lartigue Quote?

Have a favorite Jacques-Henri Lartigue quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. If you’ve found the article helpful, then we would be grateful if you could share it with other photographers.

To learn more about Lartigue’s photography and to look at his remarkable photo albums, visit the Lartigue Foundation website.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Check out the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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• Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes
• Bill Brandt Quotes
• Brassai Quotes
• Street Photography Quotes

The post 25 Jacques-Henri Lartigue Quotes on the Magic of Photography appeared first on Photogpedia.

Andre Kertesz was a pioneer of street photography and a remarkable still life photogapher. In a career that spanned seven decades, he captured everyday life with poetic beauty and elevated ordinary objects to exquisite art.

Below we’ve listed 23 of our favorite quotes from one of the most influential photographers in the history of medium to inspire and help take your photography to the next level.

Andre Kertesz Quotes

The camera is my tool. Through it I give a reason to everything around me.

I can’t talk about my style. It us kind of difficult for me. I don’t like styles. I only like taking photos and expressing myself through them.

Photography is my only language.

I am not a surrealist. I am only a realist. All this group – surrealists – use my name. No, no, I am realist.

Of course a picture can lie, but only if you are not honest with yourself…

I attribute to photography the task of recording the real nature of things, their interior, their life. The photographer’s art is a continuous discovery which requires patience and time. A photograph draws its beauty from the truth with which it’s marked. For this very reason I refuse all the tricks of the trade and professional virtuosity which could make me betray my career.

As soon as I find a subject which interests me, I leave it to the lens to record it truthfully. Look at the reporters and at the amateur photographer! They both have only one goal; to record a memory or a document. And that is pure photography.

The most valuable things in a life are a man’s memories. And they are priceless.

Kertesz on Subjects

I am a lucky man. I can do something with almost anything I see. Everything is still interesting to me.

You do not have to imagine things; reality gives you all you need.

Everything is a subject. Every subject has a rhythm. To feel it is the raison d’être. The photograph is a fixed moment of such a raison d’être, which lives on in itself.

Because I’m forever a beginner who discovers the world again and again.

I do not document anything, I give an interpretation.

People in motion are wonderful to photograph. It means catching the right moment… when one thing changes into something else.

The moment always dictates in my work. What I feel, I do. This is the most important thing for me, Everybody can look, but they don’t necessarily see. I never calculate or consider; I see a situation and I know that it’s right, even if I have to go back to get the proper lighting.

Kertesz Quotes on Technique

Technique isn’t important. Technique is in the blood. Events and mood are more important than good light and the happening is what is important.

If you want to write you should learn the alphabet. You write and write and in the end you hava a beautiful, perfect alphabet. But it isn’t the alphabed that is important. The important thing is what you are writing, what you are expressing. The same thing goes for photography. Photographs can be technically perfect and even beautiful, but they have no expression.

I am an amateur and I intend to stay that way for the rest of my life.

I do what I feel, that’s all, I am an ordinary photographer working for his own pleasure. That’s all I’ve ever done.

I like high shots. If you are on the same level, you lose many things.

Have confidence in the inventions and transformations of chance.

Seeing is not enough; you have to feel what you photograph.

I just walk around, observing the subject from various angles until the picture elements arrange themselves into a composition that pleases my eye.

What’s your Favorite Andre Kertesz Quote?

Have a favorite Andre Kertesz quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. If you’ve found the article helpful, then we would be grateful if you could share it with other photographers.

To see more of Andre Kertesz’s photography, check out the Kertesz image archive on the Artsy.net website.

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Recommended book: Andre Kertesz: His Life and Work

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Visit the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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• Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes
• Brassai Quotes
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The post 23 Andre Kertesz Quotes to Transform your Photography appeared first on Photogpedia.

Below we have listed 30 of the best quotes from the man who was nicknamed, “The Eyes of Paris” by Henry Miller, to inspire, motivate and help take your photography to the next level.

Brassai Quotes

The thing that is magnificent about photography is that it can produce images that incite emotion based on the subject matter alone.

In photography you can never express yourself directly, only through optics, the physical and chemical process.

To me photography must suggest, not insist or explain.

I don’t invent anything. I imagine everything… most of the time, I have drawn my images from the daily life around me. I think that it is by capturing reality in the humblest, most sincere, most everyday way I can, that I can penetrate to the extraordinary.

Basically, my work has been one long reportage on human life.

There are two gifts which every man of images needs to be a true creator: a certain sensitivity to life, to living things, and at the same time, the art which will enable him to capture that life in a certain specific way. I’m not talking about a pure aesthetics…

André Kertész has two qualities that are essential for a great photographer: an insatiable curiosity about the world, about people, and about life, and a precise sense of form.

My ambition has always been to show the everyday city as if we were discovering it for the first time.

Brassai on Subjects

We should try, without creasing to tear ourselves constantly by leaving our subjects and even photography itself from time to time, in order that we may come back to them with reawakened zest, with the virginal eye. That is the most precious thing we can possess.

I like living beings; I like life, but I like to capture it in such a way that the photo does not move. I don’t really like the snapshot, the Leica with its 39 views, all of which distract attention.

As a photographer, I never restricted myself to a particular subject. I photographed whatever happened to catch my attention: faces, street scenes, landscapes, or any one of the thousands of chance events of everyday life. Art and artists were a part of my own day-to-day life in Paris.

My images were surreal simply in the sense that my vision brought out the fantastic dimension of reality. My only aim was to express reality, for there is nothing more surreal than reality itself. If reality fails to fill us with wonder, it is because we have fallen into the habit of seeing it as ordinary.

In the absence of a subject with which you are passionately involved, and without the excitement that drives you to grasp it and exhaust it, you may take some beautiful pictures, but not a photographic oeuvre.

I need the subject to be as conscious as possible that he is taking part in an event… in an artistic act. I need his active collaboration.

The precise instant of creation is when you choose the subject. (meaning that the essential thing occurs at the moment when he, the photographer, meets the reality he wishes to capture.

Quotes about Art and Photography

I have always refused to specialise. I’ve always done many different kinds of things: photos, drawings, sculpture, films, books … In the end, it is hard to have many different talents, because each one wants to monopolise you … All you can do is try to alternate between them, following your instincts … I’m not afraid that I might be wasting my energy … I want to be free.

I’ve always hated specialisation. That’s why I’ve constantly changed the medium in which I express myself… That way I can breathe, I can see things anew.

Do you know what Picasso said when he looked at my drawings in 1939? “You’re crazy, Brassai. You have a gold mine and you spend your time exploiting a salt mine!” The salt mine was – naturally – photography!

Only photography could provide the intensity and expressive power…

The purpose of art is to raise people to a higher level of awareness than they would otherwise attain on their own.

I wanted to paint. But life in Paris was so interesting, that I couldn’t bear to lock myself away and get on with my artwork… I was much more interested in everything which I saw at night. Those images haunted me…

Brassai Quotes for Better Photography

There are many photographs which are full of life but which are confusing and difficult to remember. It is the force of an image which matter.

To keep from going stale you must forget your professional outlook and rediscover the virginal eye of the amateur.

After twenty years you can begin to be sure of what camera will do.

In any case, I always took people by surprise, for they never knew at what exact moment I was going to take the shot… In addition, given the kind of equipment available at that time, I often needed artificial light: so I would have someone to help me who would be holding a magnesium flare. As a result, no one knew when I was going to press the shutter.

I’ve always felt that the formal structure of a photo, its composition, was just as important as the subject itself… You have to eliminate every superfluous element, you have to guide your own gaze with an iron will.

If you take your inspiration from nature, you don’t invent anything, because what you want to do is to interpret something. But still, everything passes through your imagination. What you produce at the end is very different from the reality you started with.

Photography in our time leaves us with a grave responsibility. While we are playing in our studios with broken flowerpots, oranges, nude studies and still lifes, one day we know that we will be brought to account: life is passing before our eyes without our ever having seen a thing.

A negative doesn’t mean anything for a photographer of my type. It’s the printing by its creator alone that matters. On his stipulation that none of his photographs be printed posthumously

Chance is always there. We all use it. The difference is a poor photographer meets chance one out of a hundred times and a good photographer meets chance all the time.

What’s your Favorite Brassai Quote?

Have a favorite Brassai quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. If you’ve found the article helpful, then we would be grateful if you could share it with other photographers.

To learn more about Brassai’s photography, check his profile and photos on the Museum of Modern Art website.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Check out the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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• Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes
• Robert Frank Quotes
• Bill Brandt Quotes
• Street Photography Quotes

The post 30 Brassai Quotes on Capturing Everyday Life appeared first on Photogpedia.

Walker Evans Quotes

I used to try to figure out precisely what I was seeing all the time, until I discovered I didn’t need to. If the thing is there, why, there it is.

Leaving aside the mysteries and the inequities of human talent, brains, taste, and reputations, the matter of art in photography may come down to this: it is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing; it is the defining of observation full and felt.

Experience is very important. It comes only with time. I have time behind me so I venture to teach and say to students, “I don’t really know a hell of a lot more than you do except I’ve been around longer and I do have experience and if I can articulate it some of it will rub off and do you some good.” When I didn’t have experience that’s one thing I learned, that I needed it. It comes – talking to an experienced man is something; it’s not the same as having it but it’s better than not.

The meaning of quality in photography’s best pictures lies written in the language of vision. That language is learned by chance, not system; … our overwhelming formal education deals in words, mathematical figures and methods of rational thought, not in images.

Good photography is unpretentious.

With the camera, it’s all or nothing. You either get what you’re after at once, or what you do has to be worthless. I don’t think the essence of photography has the hand in it so much. The essence is done very quietly with a flash of the mind, and with a machine. I think too that photography is editing, editing after the taking. After knowing what to take, you have to do the editing.

The secret of photography is, the camera takes on the character and personality of the handler.

Walker Evans Quotes

Walker Evans on Photography Style

As a boy I had a cheap little camera and I had gone through the hobby photography experience developing film in the bathroom and so on. And I think it came from painters. Several of my friends were painters. And I had a visual education that I had just given myself.

When I first made photographs, they were too plain to be considered art and I wasn’t considered an artist. I didn’t get any attention at all. The people who looked at my work thought, well, that’s just a snapshot of the backyard. Privately I knew otherwise and through stubbornness stayed with it…

I began to wonder – I knew I was an artist or wanted to be one – but I was wondering whether I really was an artist. I was doing such ordinary things that I could feel the difference. Most people would look at those things and say, ‘Well, that’s nothing. What did you do that for? That’s just a wreck of a car or a wreck of a man. That’s nothing. That isn’t art.’ They don’t say that anymore.

I think I was photographing against the style of the time, against salon photography, against beauty photography, against art photography. I was doing non-artistic and non- commercial work. I felt – and it’s true – I was on the right track. I sensed that I was turning new ground. At least I though I was mining a new vein, sort of instinctively knowing it but not in any other way aware of it.

Detachment, lack of sentimentality, originality, a lot of things that sound rather empty. I know what they mean. Let’s say, “visual impact” may not mean much to anybody. I could point it out though. I mean it’s a quality that something has or does not have. Coherence. Well, some things are weak, some things are strong…

First of all, I tell [students] that art can’t be taught, but that it can be stimulated and a few barriers can be kicked down by a talented teacher, and an atmosphere can be created which is an opening into artistic action. But the thing itself is such a secret and so unapproachable.

It is easy to imagine fantasy as physical and myth as real. We do it almost every moment. We do this as we dream, as we think, and as we cope with the world about us. But these worlds of fantasy that we form into the solid things around us are the source of our discontent. They inspire our search to find ourselves.

Lettering and signs are very important to me. There are infinite possibilities both decorative in itself and as popular art, as folk art, and also as symbolism and meaning and surprise and double meaning. It’s a very rich field… I think in truth I’d like to be a letterer. And then broadly speaking I’m literary. The sign matters are just a visual symbol of writing.

Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.

Walker Evans Quotes

Technique and Process

I work rather blindly. I have a theory that seems to work with me that some of the best things you ever do sort of come through you. You don’t know where you get the impetus and response to what’s before your eyes.

[On composition] I don’t think very much about it consciously, but I’m very aware of it unconsciously, instinctively. Deliberately discard it every once in a while not to be artistic. Composition is a schoolteacher’s word. Any artist composes. I prefer to compose originally, naturally rather than self-consciously. Form and composition both are terribly important. I can’t stand a bad design or a bad object in a room. So much for form. That way it’s placed is composition… when you stop to think about what an artist is doing one question is, what is the driving force, the motive?”

Stare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.

It’s easy to photograph light reflecting from a surface, the truly hard part is capturing the light in the air.

I don’t believe in manipulation, if that’s what you mean, of any photographs or negatives. To me it should be strictly straight photography and look like it; not be painterly ever.

…nature photographs downright bore me for some reason or other. I think: ‘Oh, yes. Look at that sand dune. What of it?’

Photography is not cute cats, nor nudes, motherhood or arrangements of manufactured products. Under no circumstances it is anything ever anywhere near a beach.

I say half jokingly that photography is the most difficult of the arts. It does require a certain arrogance to see and to choose. I feel myself walking on a tightrope instead of on the ground.

Documentary Photography

I’m sometimes called a ‘documentary photographer’ but… a man operating under that definition could take a sly pleasure in the disguise. Very often I’m doing one thing when I’m thought to be doing another.

Documentary: That’s a sophisticated and misleading word. And not really clear… The term should be documentary style… You see, a document has use, whereas art is really useless.

The photographs are not illustrative. They, and the text, are coequal, mutually independent, and fully collaborative. By their fewness, and by the importance of the reader’s eye, this will be misunderstood by most of that minority which does not wholly ignore it. In the interests, however, of the history and future of photography, that risk seems irrelevant, and this flat statement necessary.

… that’s always been true with anything, whether there’s any technical need or not. For example, we’re all taught to write, and anybody can sit down and write something. Not everybody can sit down and write something that’s worth writing.

Interviewer: Do you think it’s possible for the camera to lie?
Walker Evans: It certainly is. It almost always does.

What I believe is really good in the so-called documentary approach to photography is the addition of lyricism. This quality is usually produced unconsciously and even unintentionally and accidentally by the cameraman.

Incidentally, part of a photographer’s gift should be with people. You can do some wonderful work if you know how to make people understand what you’re doing and feel all right about it, and you can do terrible work if you put them on the defense, which they all are at the beginning. You’ve got to take them off their defensive attitude and make them participate.

I never took it upon myself to change the world. And those contemporaries of mine who were going around falling for the idea that they were going to bring down the United States government and make a new world were just asses to me.

It’s too presumptuous and naïve to think you can change society by a photograph or anything else… I equate that with propaganda; I think that’s a lower rank of purpose.

Die knowing something. You’re not here long.

Walker Evans Quotes

What’s your Favorite Walker Evans Quote?

Have a favorite Walker Evans quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. If you’ve found the article helpful, then we would be grateful if you could share it with other photographers.

To see more of Evans’s incredible photography, check out the Walker Evans image archive at the Museum of Modern Art.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Visit the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

Related Quote Articles:

• Robert Frank Quotes
• Henri Cartier-Bresson Quotes
• Mary Ellen Mark Quotes
• Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Quotes

The post 34 Walker Evans Quotes on Documentary Photography and Visual Poetry appeared first on Photogpedia.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Quotes

All photographers have to do, is find and catch the story-telling moment.

We are only beginning to learn what to say in a photograph. The world we live in is a succession of fleeting moments, any one of which might say something significant. When such an instant arrives, I react intuitively.

The way I would describe a pictorial is that it is a picture that makes everybody say ‘Aaaaah,’ with five vowels when they see it. It is something you would like to hang on the wall. The French word ‘photogenique’ defines it better than anything in English. It is a picture which must have quality, drama, and it must, in addition, be as good technically as you can possible make it.

When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.

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.

On Style and Technique

My style hasn’t changed much in all these sixty years. I still use, most of the time, existing light and try not to push people around. I have to be as much a diplomat as a photographer.

I’m often asked how I go about an assignment – well, I was always good with people. I’m no dumbbell; I read a great deal and treat people the same way I wish to be treated myself. When I enter a room, I can talk to almost anybody – no matter if they are an astronomer, a physicist, a philosopher, an astrologer, anything adn everything. It’s important for a photographer to remember they may want to return later on, as a friend.

I seldom think when I take a picture. My eyes and fingers react – click. But first, it’s most important to decide on the angle at which your photograph is to be taken.

I don’t like to work with assistants. I’m already one too many; the camera alone would be enough.

I see pictures all the time. I could stay for hours and watch a raindrop.

There is, I think, an electronic impulse between my eye and my finger. But even this is not enough. I dream that someday the step between my mind and my finger will no longer be needed. And that simply by blinking my eyes, I shall make pictures. Then, I think, I shall really have become a photographer.

It’s important to understand it’s OK to control the subject. If most editorial stories were photographed just as they are, editors would end up throwing most in the waste basket. You have to work hard at making an editorial picture. You need to re-stage things, rearrange things so that they work for the story, with truth and without lying.

For instance you might ask a subject to sit this way and then look at the camera. You might ask them to move their face this way or stand over there. Sure, I rearrange things – but the person hasn’t changed, the room is still the same, it’s the same light.

Eisenstaedt Quotes on Photographing People

In a photograph a person’s eyes tell much, sometimes they tell all.

I was all set to to photograph the Prime Minister [Winston Churchill] from the best side and at the best angle, as he sat in an armchair in his library. But Churchill shook his head. ‘Young man,’ he called me ( I was fifty-two at the time). ‘I know how to take pictures. You have to do it from there.’ In order to please the great man I photographed him ‘from there’, and then discreedtly skipped back to the opposide side and got the picture I wanted.

I once asked Eisie if he had ever felt awed by any of the hundreds of famous people he had photgraphed. “Never when I had a camera in my hand” he said. “I always remembered what Wilson Hicks, the picture editor of LIFE, said to me when I was on assignment photographing the most glamorous stars in Hollywood: “They may be queens in their profession” he said ‘but you are a king in yours.” This has helped me with anyone and everyone.” Eisenstaedt : Remembrances by Bryan Holme, Doris C. O’Neil, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Barbara Baker Burrows

I don’t come as a photographer. I come as a friend.

Making friends is second nature to me. I like photographing people at their best. This means making them feel relaxed and completely at home with you from beginning.

Never boss people around. It’s more important to click with people than to click the shutter.

Eisenstaedt on Light

Today’s photographers think differently. Many can’t see real light anymore. They think only in terms of strobe – sure, it all looks beautiful but it’s not really seeing. If you have the eyes to see it, the nuances of light are already there on the subject’s face. If your thinking is confined to strobe light sources, your palette becomes very mean – which is the reason I photograph only in available light.

I always prefer photographing in available light – or Rembrandt-light I like to call it – so you get the natural modulations of the face. It makes a more alive, real, and flattering portrait.

Alfred Eisenstaedt Quotes about Equipment

The important thing is not the camera but the eye.

People don’t often take me seriously because I carry so little equipment and make so little fuss… I never carried a lot of equipment. My motto has always been, “Keep it simple.”

I waited, focused, waited again for several minutes, then – remember, I always behaved like an amateur with a little equipment – click, it was done.

I don’t use an exposure meter. My personal advice is: Spend the money you would put into such an instrument for film. Buy yards of film, miles of it. Buy all the film you can get your hands on. And then experiment with it.That is the only way to be successful in photography. Test, try, experiment, feel your way along. It is the experience, not technique, which counts in camera work first of all. If you get the feel of photography, you can take fifteen pictures while one of your opponents is trying out his exposure meter.

With photography, everything is in the eye and these days I feel young photographers are missing the point a bit. People always ask about cameras but it doesn’t matter what camera you have. You can have the most modern camera in the world but if you don’t have an eye, the camera is worthless. Young people know more about modern cameras and lighting than I do. When I started out in photography I didn’t own an exposure meter – I couldn’t , they didn’t exist! I had to guess.

The Life of a Photographer

I enjoy traveling and recording far-away places and people with my camera. But I also find it wonderfully rewarding to see what I can discover outside my own window. You only need to study the scene with the eyes of a photographer.

People will never understand the patience a photographer requires to make a great photograph, all they see is the end result. I can stand in front of a leaf with a dew drop, or a rain drop, and stay there for ages just waiting for the right moment. Sure, people think I’m crazy, but who cares? I see more than they do!

…but when a photographer wants to do really good work, he must work alone. He shouldn’t be surrounded by anyone – art directors, girlfriends, or anyone. Think in terms of Cartier-Bresson. Can you imagine Cartier-Bresson working with someone leaning over his shoulder? Would it be possible?

Yes, I sold buttons to earn living. But I took pictures to keep on living. Pictures are my life – as necessary as eating or breathing.

His Iconic VJ Day Photograph

I will be remembered when I’m in heaven. People won’t remember my name, but they will know the photographer who did that picture of that nurse being kissed by the sailor at the end of World War II. Everybody remembers that.

[I was following the sailor] running along the street grabbing any and every girl in sight. Whether she was a grandmother, stout, thin, old, didn’t make any difference. None of the pictures that were possible pleased me. Then, suddenly in a flash, I saw something white being grabbed. I turned around and clicked the moment the sailor kissed the nurse.

Now if this girl hadn’t been a nurse, if she’d been dressed dark clothes, I wouldn’t have had a picture. The contrast between her white dress and the sailor’s dark uniform gives the photograph its extra impact.

Retire? Retire from What? Life? I will only retire when I am dead and people will say ‘that’s the man who shot that picture of the sailor and the nurse on VJ Day’!

What’s your Favorite Alfred Eisenstaedt Quote?

Have a favorite Alfred Eisenstaedt quote from the list? Let us know in the comment section below.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, or print it out, and refer to it next time you need some inspiration. If you’ve found the article helpful, then we would be grateful if you could share it with other photographers.

To see learn more about Eisenstaedt’s remarkable photography, check out this Alfred Eisenstaedt article on Google Art and Culture.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Visit the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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• Sebastiao Salgado Quotes
• Photojournalism and Documentary Photography Quotes

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Klein was also an innovative fashion photographer and made several films, including the first ever Muhammad Ali documentary and a feature length satire on the fashion world, Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?

In this article we’ll be sharing our favorite William Klein quotes to help to your photography to the next level. If you find the article helpful, we would be grateful if you could share it with other photographers.

William Klein Quotes

Every photograph, I look at the contact, it brings back memories of everything, how I was feeling, tired, full of beans, photography is like that.

You look at a contact sheet with a magnifying glass and you see a shot, suddenly it all comes back – that was a nice day, you wanted a walk, your feet were hurting, you felt that you would hit on something.

I think there are two kinds of photography… If you look at modern photography, you will find, on the one hand the Weegees, the Diane Arbuses, the Robert Franks – funky photographs. And then you have the people who go out in the woods. Ansel Adams, Weston. It’s like black and white jazz.

I liked Cartier-Bresson’s pictures, but I didn’t like his set of rules. So I reversed them. I thought his view that photography must be objective was nonsense. Because the photographer who pretends he’s wiping all the slates clean in the name of objectivity doesn’t exist.

Anybody who pretends to be objective isn’t realistic.

How can photography be non-committal? Cartier-Bresson chooses the photograph this subject instead of that, he blows up another shot of the subject, and he chooses another one for publication. He’s making a statement. He’s making decisions and choices every second. I thought, if you’re doing that, make it show.

I have a special relationship with God. And when I take the right photograph, God gives me a little bing! in the camera. And then I know I’m on the right track.

I find if I look back that half of everything I’ve done is chance.

My photographs are the fragments of a shapeless cry that tries to say who knows what… What would please me most is to make photographs as incomprehensible as life.

Be yourself. I much prefer seeing something, even it is clumsy, that doesn’t look like somebody else’s work.

William Klein Quotes

Klein on Street Photography

I went out on the street and I just photographed the shit out of New York. I was free to do what I wanted and I didn’t know that I was doing anything revolutionary. I was fascinated with faces, and I would go into crowds and really take photographs point-blank and nobody would look at me.

Robert Capa said, “If you’re photograph is not good, it’s because you’re not close enough.” I heard that many years after the way I had discovered how I wanted to take photographs or film.

I was very consciously trying to do the opposite of what Cartier-Bresson was doing. He did pictures without intervening. He was like the invisible camera. I wanted to be visible in the biggest way possible.

I was taking pictures for myself. I felt free. Photography was a lot of fun for me. First of all I’d get really excited waiting to see if the pictures would come out the next day. I didn’t really know anything about photography, but I loved the camera.

I wanted to “own” what I was seeing. By accumulating documents about people I came across in the streets, or by combining people, objects around them, places… I was under the impression that I owned all that, that everything belonged to me, that it was mine. Later, the darkroom allowed me to express this ownership on a sheet of light-sensitive photographic paper. So, there was this relationship, and this “photographic shot” side that was not unpleasant. We point, we cock, we shot… And that’s it, to a certain extent, it’s like killing the subject by owning him, by freezing the subject in time and space. Do we not say “shoot” in English?

With all these so-called great photographers – Cartier-Bresson and Doisneau – everything is so hunky dory.

Rather than catching people unaware, they show the face they want to show. Unposed, caught unaware, they might reveal ambiguous expressions, brows creased in vague internal contemplation, illegible, perhaps meaningless. Why not allow the subject the possibility of revealing his attitude toward life, his neighbor, even the photographer? Both ways are valid to me.

In any case, very often people did things I couldn’t have organized or imagined. A mother points a toy gun at her child’s temple. Maybe I asked her to do it, I honestly forget. But lets say I did, out of some perverse inspiration. At the same time, though, she holds the child’s hand in the most tender, touching way.

The way a subject reacts to the camera can create a kind of happening. Why pretend the camera isn’t there? Why not use it? Maybe people will reveal themselves as violent or tender, crazed or beautiful. But in some way, they reveal who they are. They’ll have taken a self-portrait.

A lot of people in my photographs either look at me, or there is somebody to the side who is looking at the group and saying, “What is this guy photographing?” It wasn’t usual at that time. This was 1955, ’54. It was kind of surprising for a lot of people to see me photographing them.

I feel like I’m doing something that’s worthwhile. I feel like I’m showing something other people haven’t shown. I don’t get to talk to the people who I photograph, I just go, along, banging away. So I don’t really have a relationship with them. A lot of people think it’s very important. I don’t. It’s like love at first sight. I have an impression when I see somebody, and I have an idea of who they are, or what they are.

I’m not innvisible, but I don’t make a deal out of taking photographs, so people don’t really feel my presence… I do things very normally and find that’s the best way to work.

I don’t roam around with a camera and never did. I took pictures in spurts, for my books, for some assignments or on special occasions. Like people who take out their cameras for Christmas and birthdays. Each time, like them, probably, I feel it’s the first time and as if I would have to relearn the moves. Luckily, it comes pretty fast, like riding a bike.

Photographing Cities

The idea of having these cities as the subject of the book was something that came naturally. It became a specialty of mine to do books on cities. So I did about seven cities.

Having lived in France for several years, I thought I had one eye that was European and one that was a street-smart New Yorker.

If I went to Moscow, it’s because I wanted to see how people in a socialist country [were] living, and I hope that the photographs I took would make sense to people… to Russians… to everybody.

I’ve noticed that in general the Paris of photographers… was romantic, foggy and above all, ethnically homogeneous. But for me, Paris was, as much as and perhaps more than New York, a melting pot. A cosmopolitan city, multicultural and totally multiethnic, whatever Le Pen thinks.

In Tokyo [the camera] was more of a mask, a disguise. I had only the vaguest clue to what was going on. I wasn’t there to judge anything. I was an outsider and felt pretty uncomfortable sometimes. Have you ever eaten an official Japanese dinner for four hours on your knees? It was different in New York.

I would say looking back that the book I did [on] New York was my favorite.

William Klein Quotes

Klein’s New York Book

I thought New York had it coming, that it needed a kick in the balls. When I returned to New York, I wanted to get even. Now I had a weapon, photography.

Before my book on New York, I was a painter. When I came back to the city in 1954, after six years away, I decided to keep a photographic diary of my return. These were practically my first ‘real’ photographs. I had neither training nor complexes. By necessity and by choice, I decided that anything would have to go.

In a way its true I had a lot of old scores to settle. I was involved. According to the Henri Cartier-Bresson scriptures, you’re not to intrude or editorialize, but I don’t see how that’s possible or why it should be. I loved and hated New York. Why shut up about it?

The New York book was a visual diary and it was also kind of personal newspaper. I wanted it to look like the news. I didn’t relate to European photography. It was too poetic and anecdodtal for me… The kinetic quality of New York, the kids, dirt, madness… I tried to find a photographic style that would come close to it. So I would be grainy and contrasted and black. I’d crop, blur, play with the negatives. I didn’t see clean technique being right for New York. I could imagine my pictures lying in the gutter like the New York Daily News.

I saw the book I wanted to do as a tabloid gone berserk, gross, grainy, overinked, with a brutal layout, bull-horn headlines. This is what New York deserved and would get.

In rough neighborhoods in New York [sometimes]… it’s better not to look. So if you point a camera at a stranger, you’re almost breaking a tradition of not getting involved. Yet in a way, the camera erases involvement. Its accepted.

They didn’t know I might be photographing a hundred other things going on behind them – someone lurking in the background, a shadow, a reflection, posters, traffic, junk. [I’d say], ‘Hold it! Don’t move! Hey, look this way!’ People would say, ‘What’s this for?” I’d say, ‘The News.’ ‘The News! Wow! No shit!’ I didn’t much care.

In New York I took responsibility for the people I photographed. I felt I knew them – the people, the way they relate to each other, the streets, the buildings, the city. And I tried to make sense of it all. I just photographed what I saw though its true I used the camera as a weapon in New York.

It was a period of incredible excitement for me – coming to terms with myself, with the city I hated and loved, and with photography. Every day for months I was out gathering evidence. I made up the rules as I went along and they suited me fine.

I was a make believe ethnographer: treating New Yorkers like an explorer would treat Zulus – searching for the rawest snapshot, the zero degree of photography.

William Klein Quotes

Finding a Publisher for the Book

I spent six months in New York at that time and thought I had a book. So I went to publishers here, in New York, and got nowhere. Most of the people who looked at the photographs looked at the work and said “What kind of book is this? You make New York look like a slum.” I said, “Yeah, New York is a slum.” “What kind of New York are you showing me, everything black and awful?” I said, “No, you live on Fifth Avenue and your office is on Madison. You’ve never been to the Bronx, you’ve never been to Queens or Flatbush. This is the real New York.

In the 1950s I couldn’t find an American publisher for my New York pictures. Everyone I showed them to said, “Ech! This isn’t New York – too ugly , too seedy and too one-sided.” They said, “This isn’t photography, this is shit!”

The layout of my first book was directly inspired by a journal, a tabloid called “New York Daily News” and that was published every day in 3 million copies…That’s how I conceived all my other books, as an extension of a photographic journal across the globe.

The resulting book went against the grain thirty years ago. My approach was not fashionable then nor is it it today.

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Recommended book: William Klein: New York 1954-55

Klein’s New York book is one of the most influential photobooks ever published. His black and white, grainy images perfectly capture the energy of the city and take the viewer on a journey around the neighbourhoods of ’50s New York.

William Klein on Fashion Photography

Fashion came into my life by accident. Liberman had seen an exhibition that I had and he said, “I like what you are doing. Why don’t you come and talk to me at Vogue and we’ll see what we can do together.” I didn’t start making fashion photographs for Vogue. I was financed by Vogue to do this book on New York. As far as fashion was concerned, Liberman said to me at one point, “we are financing these wonderful photos you are taking in the street but we are a fashion magazine. So why don’t you try your hand at fashion?”

I had no idea how to start. I started to look at the fashion magazines, and what was being done. I discovered Penn and Avedon, and for me these were the ideal photographers. For me it was a golden era.

When I started to pose the question of how to take a fashion photograph, I would have to imagine certain things and I had a couple of ideas that I used. And I never used the technique I had of taking street photographs, because I thought that would cheapen the other work, so I tried to invent things which would be specifically fashion photographs, done in a specific way.

[On Vogue magazine fashion editors] I never went to those meetings – all those women with hats and thick glasses.

Mirrors. I thought that if I have mirrors, then I could shoot the girls on the mirrors. Shoot from the back and I would have a composite photograph.

I discovered working with a telephoto lens was something that I dug. Went out onto the streets with these girls, and told them to cross the street and mix in with traffic and people. And that was the first real, big assignment I gave myself.

I like these situations where things just developed.

[on his most famous fashion photo] I had these girls walking back and forth, doing double-takes because they more or less had the same dress. I was experimenting… with a tele-photo. Nobody could see me. I was half-way up the steps. These men didn’t understand. They thought they were hookers. They walked up and started feeling their ass. The editor from Vogue started panicking and she said, “We’re going to create a scandal.” So we had to stop.

All the photographic stores were besieged by photographers, buying telephoto lenses for their fashion shoots. I think it’s a good idea. I still think it’s a good idea.

[on Who Are You, Polly Maggoo?] The film isn’t about fashion, it’s about media. Fashion is part of media. It is also something which is pretty funny, graphic and inventive. I thought, “lets do a film on fashion.”

William Klein on Photography Technique

I photographed the panels, and the light wasn’t very good, so the exposure was long, and I had Jan my wife Jan, turn panels while I photographed, and I saw these geometrical forms, which blurred, and I thought, well, maybe this is something new. And I had the idea that if I had a negative, I could do anything with it.

Quite deliberately, I did the opposite to what was usually done. I thought that an absence of framing, chance, use of the accidental and a different relationship with the camera would make it possible to liberate the photographic image. There are some things that only a camera can do. The camera is full of possibilities as yet unexploited. But that is what photography is all about. The camera can surprise us. We must help it do so.

I would look at my contact sheets and my heart would be beating, you know. To see if I’d caught what I wanted. Sometimes, I’d take shots without aiming, just to see what happened. I’d rush into crowds – bang! Bang! I liked the idea of luck and taking a chance, other times I’d frame a composition I saw and plant myself somewhere, longing for some accident to happen.

Choosing location, maybe a symbolic spot, the light and perspective – and suddenly you know the moment is yours. It must be close to what a fighter feels after jabbing and circling and getting hit, when suddenly theres an opening, and bang! Right on the button. It’s a fantastic feeling.

If you look carefully at life, you see blur. Shake your hand blur is a part of life. But why must a photograph be a mirror?

I had neither training nor complexes. By necessity and choice, I decided that anything would have to go. A technique of no taboos: blur, grain, contrast, cock-eyed framing, accidents, whatever happens.

I have always loved the amateur side of photography, automatic photographs, accidental photographs with uncentered compositions, heads cut off, whatever. I incite people to make their self-portraits. I see myself as their walking photo booth.

Photography Equipment Quotes

When I started, I only had two lenses: a 50mm and a 135mm. I was very frustrated with the 50 mm and the telephoto lens. I could not put enough things, not enough people in the photo. So I went to a shop and the salesman made me try a 28mm. I immediately went outside and started taking pictures, and I was able to get as close as I wanted to things and people, whilst adding all I wanted in the frame, whilst staying sharp. It was my beginnings with a 28mm, it was a good length. I don’t know if it still exists.

The right filter, the right film, the right exposure – none of that interested me very much. I had only one camera to start with. Secondhand two lenses no filter, none of that. What interested me was getting something on film to put into an enlarger, maybe to get another picture. And I was in a big hurry. Once I got used to everything in New York I knew the trance would wear off. So I took pictures with a vengeance.

I used the wide-angle lens as a normal lens. I had no philosophy about it. When I looked in the viewfinder and realized I could see all the contradictions and confusion that was there with the wide-angle – that was what was great.

I photograph what I see in front of me, I move in close to see better and use a wide-angle lens to get as much as possible in the frame.

I’m not deliberately distorting. I need the wide-angle to get a lot of things into the frame. Take the picture of may day in Moscow. With a 50mm jammed between the parade and the side-walk, I would have been able to frame only the old lady in the middle. But what I wanted was the whole group – the tartars, the Armenians, Ukranians, Russians, an image of empire surrounding one old lady on a sidewalk as a parade goes by.

Most things I did with photography are considered acceptable today – except maybe this use of a wide-angle. It seemed more normal to me than the 50mm lens. You could even say the 50mm is an imposition of a limited point of view. But neither lens is really normal or correct. Because in life we see out of two eyes, whereas the camera has only one. So whatever lens is used, all photographs are deformations of what you actually see with your eyes.

The Anti-Photograph

In photography, I was interested in letting the machine loose, in taking risks, exploring the possibilities of film, paper, printing in different ways, playing with exposures, with composition and accidents. Its all part of what an image can be, which is anything. Good pictures, bad pictures – why not?

I came from the outside, the rules of photography didn’t interest me… there were things you could do with a camera that you couldn’t do with any other medium… grain, contrast, blur, cock-eyed framing, eliminating or exaggerating grey tones and so on. I thought it would be good to show what’s possible, to say that this is as valid of a way of using the camera as conventional approaches.

So who can pin down photography? We’re drunk with images. [Sontag’s] sick of it. I’m sick of it. But we’re moved by old amateur photographs because they aren’t concerned about theories of photography or what a picture must be. They’re just photographs without rules or dogma.

I have always done the opposite of what I was trained to do… Having little technical background, I became a photographer. Adopting a machine, I do my utmost to make it malfunction. For me, to make a photograph is to make an anti-photograph.

What’s your Favorite William Klein Quote?

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To see more of Klein’s remarkable street and fashion photography, check his artist profile at ArtNet.

Looking for more words of wisdom from master photographers? Visit the quotes section of Photogpedia for more great photography quotes.

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