Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but read more

Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.

A photograph is neither taken nor seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you. read more

A photograph is neither taken nor seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.

Photography is truth. And cinema is truth twenty-four times a second.

Photography is truth. And cinema is truth twenty-four times a second.

There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.

There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.

You know what a camera is? A mirror with memory.

You know what a camera is? A mirror with memory.

Blessed be the inventor of photography! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that read more

Blessed be the inventor of photography! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that has "cast up" in my time -- this art by which even the "poor" can possess themselves of tolerable of their absent dear ones.

The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the read more

The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter, because read more

It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter, because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the ordinary.

If photography were difficult in the true sense . . . that the creation of a simple photograph would entail read more

If photography were difficult in the true sense . . . 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.