I prefer a taken to a made photograph.
The photograph annihilates the person.
For me the criterion of a good photograph is that it is unforgettable.
Whatever it is about pictures, photographs, it's just about impossible to follow up with words. They don't have anything to do with each other.
We perceive and interpret the outer world through a set of incredibly fine internal receptors. But we are incapable, by ourselves, of grasping or tweezing out any permanent, sharable figment of it. Practically speaking, we ritually verify what is there, and are disposed to call it reality. But, with photographs, we have concrete proof that we have not been hallucinating all our lives.
I would love to photograph Stephen Hawking. I am just fascinated by science, I really am.
Making a definitive declaration of intent or meaning kills the photograph.
Quit trying to find beautiful objects to photograph. Find the ordinary objects so you can transform it by photographing it.
I never take a picture of a face because a face is somebody, an arm is not recognizable as somebody. When you take a photograph of someone's face, it identifies it as somebody, but if you take just a fragment, it's everybody. It's not one person.
Photographs are still always depictions, it's just that for my generation the model for the photograph is probably not reality any more, but images we have of that reality.
I can't be anonymous by reason of your confounded photographs. (To Julia Margaret Cameron)
Finally, the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads – as an anthology of images. To collect photographs is to collect the world
But huge photographs of dead bodies are slightly different. I couldn't find much humor there.
The transactions between me and the people that I photograph are very very collaborative.
I enjoy places that have mystery and atmosphere, perhaps a patina of age, a suggestion rather than a description, a question or two. I look for memories, traces, evidence of the human interaction with the landscape. Sometimes I photograph pure nature, sometimes urban structures.
A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into.
You must photograph where you are involved; where you are overwhelmed by what you see before you.
The thing about photography is, some people surround themselves with extremely strong subject matter. And unless you're a moron, you're going to get a really strong photograph.
An eyewitness account is evidence that an artist has proposed a work of art. But documentary evidence (i. e. a photograph) is more conclusive.
The formal artistic gesture is already expressed in the act of taking the photograph.