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| | 38 Photographers Who Always Inspire Greatness | 
| Irving Penn I myself have always stood in the awe of the camera. I recognize it for the instrument it is, part Stradivarius, part scalpel. - Irving Penn Photographing a cake can be art. - Irving Penn -
A beautiful print is a thing in itself, not just a halfway house on the way to the page. Irving Penn  
 
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| Helmut Newton The first 10,000 shots are the worst. - Helmut Newton To have taboos, then to get around them – that is interesting.- Helmut Newton - |
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| Edward Steichen I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself... - Edward Steichen Photography is a major force in explaining man to man. - Edward Steichen - |
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| Man Ray Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask "how," while others of a more curious nature will ask "why." Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information. - Man Ray Nature does not create works of art. It is we, and the faculty of interpretation peculiar to the human mind, that see art. - Man Ray -
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| Alfred Steiglitz I am not a painter, nor an artist. Therefore I can see straight, and that may be my undoing. - Alfred Stieglitz The camera was waiting for me by predestination and I took to it as a musician takes to the piano or a painter to canvas. I found that I was master of the elements, that I could work miracles. - Alfred Stieglitz I do not object to retouching, dodging. or accentuation as long as they do not interfere with the natural qualities of photographic technique. - Alfred Stieglitz Wherever there is light, one can photograph. - Alfred Stieglitz The arts equally have distinct departments, and unless photography has its own possibilities of expression, separate from those of the other arts, it is merely a process, not an art. - Alfred Stieglitz 
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| Ansel Adams There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs. - Ansel Adams Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment. - Ansel Adams A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words. - Ansel Adams There is nothing worse than a brilliant image of a fuzzy concept. - Ansel Adams A good photograph is knowing where to stand. - Ansel Adams Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships! - Ansel Adams 
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| Ralph Gibson You see, I'm not interested in mediocrity in photography. I'm not interested in selling cat shit to dogs. I just want to do my own thing. If people like my work, all the better. If they don't, too bad. - Ralph Gibson To communicate requires that those who view the work also understand. Fortunately, people respond to visual stimulus on more than one level. Abstraction, for instance, has always played a big role in artistic expression, and it is becoming more accepted in photographs. There’s nothing new about abstraction in painting, but for some reason people respect painting more than photography. -Ralph Gibson  
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| Julia Margaret Cameron From the first moment I handled my lens with a tender ardour. - Julia Margaret Cameron I longed to arrest all beauty that came before me, and at length the longing has been satisfied. - Julia Margaret Cameron 
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| Sarah Moon I never photograph reality. - Sarah Moon Very often I say to myself: I would like to make a photo where nothing happens. But in order to eliminate, there has to be something to begin with. For nothing to happen, something has to happen first. - Sarah Moon 
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| Sheila Metzner Photographers are often transformed by their own work. They should look at themselves every now and again to make sure they haven't become some kind of beast. If they have, they should understand they still have to look at that beast in the mirror every day. - Sheila Metzner 
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| Sally Mann ...photographs open doors into the past but they also allow a look into the future. - Sally Mann .....I struggle with enormous discrepancies: between the reality of motherhood and the image of it, between my love for my home and the need to travel, between the varied and seductive paths of the heart. The lessons of impermanance, the occasional despair and the muse, so tenuously moored, all visit their needs upon me and I dig deeply for the spiritual utilities that restore me: my love for the place, for the one man left, for my children and friends and the great green pulse of spring. - Sally Mann 
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| Imogen Cunningham Once a woman who does street work said to me, 'I've never photographed anyone I haven't asked first.' I said to her, 'Suppose Cartier-Bresson asked the man who jumped the puddle to do it again - it never would have been the same. Start stealing!' - Imogen Cunningham Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow. - Imogen Cunningham 
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| Pete Turner What have I done wrong?" -he said later." Nothing, I think. I am steadily surprised that there are so many photographers that reject manipulating reality, as if that was wrong. Change reality! If you don't find it, invent it! - Pete Turner Ultimately, simplicity is the goal - in every art, and achieving simplicity is one of the hardest things to do. Yet it's easily the most essential. - Pete Turner 
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| Jerry N. Uelsmann Ultimately, my hope is to amaze myself. The anticipation of discovering new possibilities becomes my greatest joy. - Jerry Uelsmann And young people who are learning digital skills discover that the real challenge is coming up with an image that resonates, first of all, with your self and hopefully, with an audience. They can learn all these new techniques and think that they’re easier to use, but creating great images isn’t about the tools. -Jerry Uelsmann 
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| Horst P. Horst I don’t think photography has anything remotely to do with the brain. It has to do with eye appeal. - Horst P. Horst 
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| Arnold Newman Photography, as we all know, is not real at all. It is an illusion of reality with which we create our own private world. - Arnold Newman I am convinced that any photographic attempt to show the complete man is nonsense. We can only show, as best we can, what the outer man reveals. The inner man is seldom revealed to anyone, sometimes not even the man himself. - Arnold Newman 
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| Laslo Moholy-Nagy The enemy of photography is the convention, the fixed rules of 'how to do'. The salvation of photography comes from the experiment. - Laszlo Moholy-Nagy ...it cannot be too plainly stated that it is quite unimportant whether photography produces ‘art’ or not. Its own basic laws, not the opinions of art critics, will provide the only valid measure of its future worth. - Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
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| Carier-Bresson Photography has not changed since its origin except in its technical aspects, which for me are not important. - Henri Cartier-Bresson It seems dangerous to be a portrait artist who does commissions for clients because everyone wants to be flattered, so they pose in such a way that there’s nothing left of truth. - Henri Cartier-Bresson And no photographs taken with the aid of flash light, either, if only out of respect for the actual light - even when there isn't any of it. - Henri Cartier-Bresson 
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| Part Two | 
| Jeanloup Sief All aspects of photography interest me and I feel for the female body the same curiosity and the same love as for a landscape, a face or anything else which interests me. In any case, the nude is a form of landscape. There are no reasons for my photographs, nor any rules; all depends on the mood of the moment, on the mood of the model. - Jeanloup Sieff 
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| Robert Demachy There is still a misunderstanding on the subject of the straight print, as opposed to the modified print. Some champions of pure photography, as it is called, will even deny that a modified print is a photograph at all. For my part, I believe that if the X deposit forming an image is built up by the action of light, under the shadow of another image, transparent, and also due to light action, the result must be a photograph, whatever modifications the photographer has thought proper to introduce amongst the relative proportions of the deposit. - Robert Demachy 
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| Alvin Langdon Coburn My aim in photography is always to convey a mood and not to impart local information. This is not an easy matter, for the camera if left to its own devices will simply impart local information to the exclusiveness of everything else. - Alvin Langdon Coburn A photographic portrait needs more collaboration between sitter and artist than a painted portrait. - Alvin Langdon Coburn 
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| Richard Avedon And if a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up. I know that the accident of my being a photographer has made my life possible. - Richard Avedon I've worked out of a series of no's. No to exquisite light, no to apparent compositions, no to the seduction of poses or narrative. And all these no's force me to the "yes." I have a white background. I have the person I'm interested in and the thing that happens between us. - Richard Avedon 
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| Rene Groebli 
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| Devorah Turbeville I have an instinct for finding the odd location, the dismissed face, the eerie athmosphere, the oppressive mood...my muses are Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Andree Tarkovsky, the list is endless...I like my pictures best when there is a sense of tension, an unfinished narrative,...ambiguity... in these times aesthetic taste is dismissed as irrelevant. well, I am perverse, for that very reason I´m more drawn to it than ever. I have been described as having style, of being a mannered photographer...it´s some people´s quarrel with my work and others´ fascination." - Deborah Turbeville 
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| Ernst Haas Best wide-angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the 'ah-ha'. - Ernst Haas I am not interested in shooting new things - I am interested to see things new. - Ernst Haas 
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| Karl Blossfeldt My botanical documents should contribute to restoring the link with nature. They should reawaken a sense of nature, point to its teeming richness of form, and prompt the viewer to observe for himself the surrounding plant world. - Karl Blossfeldt 
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| Eugene W. Smith Hardening of the categories causes art disease. - W. Eugene Smith An artist must be ruthlessly selfish. - W. Eugene Smith Available light is any damn light that is available! - W. Eugene Smith The purpose of all art is to cause a deep and emotion, also one that is entertaining or pleasing. Out of the depth and entertainment comes value. - W. Eugene Smith In music I still prefer the minor key, and in printing I like the light coming from the dark. I like pictures that surmount the darkness, and many of my photographs are that way. It is the way I see photographically. For practical reasons, I think it looks better in print too. - W. Eugene Smith 
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| Bert Stern Women especially ask me to take their pictures, because they think I’ll make them beatuful. - Bert Stern In 1962, photographer Bert Stern shot a series of photos of Marilyn Monroe that have collectively come to be known as “The Last Sitting.” Taken during several boozy sessions at the Hotel Bel-Air, the photographs are arguably the most famous images ever captured of America’s most famous actress. Six weeks after she had posed, Monroe was found dead of an apparent barbiturate overdose. Forty-six years later, Stern has revisited his classic shots with Lindsay Lohan, another actress whose prodigious fame is not quite commensurate with her professional achievements. Stern, who shot the photos on film rather than digitally, told me he was interested in Lohan because he suspected “she had a lot more depth to her” than one might assume from “those teenage movies.” -New York Magazine 
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| David Bailey 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. - David Bailey I never cared for fashion much, amusing little seams and witty little pleats: it was the girls I liked. - David Bailey |
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| Ruth Thorn-Thompsen Looking for quotes. 
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| Diane Arbus I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them. - Diane Arbus A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know. - Diane Arbus Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies. - Diane Arbus 
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| Mary Ellen Mark The difficulty with color is to go beyond the fact that it's color – to have it be not just a colorful picture but really be a picture about something. It's difficult. So often color gets caught up in color, and it becomes merly decorative. Some photographers use [ it ] brilliantly to make visual statements combining color and content; otherwise it is empty. - Mary Ellen Mark I always wanted to photograph the universal subjects. - Mary Ellen Mark 
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| Joel Peter Whitkin My work would have the impact of my unreality - my doubts. I wanted my photographs to be as powerful as the last thing a person sees or remembers before death. - Joel-Peter Witkin 
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| Edward Weston Ultimately success or failure in photographing people depends on the photographer's ability to understand his fellow man. - Edward Weston I would say to any artist: 'Don't be repressed in your work, dare to experiment, consider any urge, if in a new direction all the better.' - Edward Weston 
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| Josef Sudek ..everything around us, dead or alive, in the eyes of a crazy photographer mysteriously takes on many variations, so that a seemingly dead object comes to life through light or by its surroundings.... To capture some of this - I suppose that's lyricism. - Josef Sudek  |
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| Erwin Blumenfeld Looking for good quotes  |
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| George Hoyningen-Huene Was there no way to render images of women the way you saw them in their normal surroundings, pausing for a moment during their daily activities and not posing for a photograph ? Somehow the photographers had as yet not captured the attitudes and gestures that women assumed, they seemed to freeze in front of the lens, as if posing for their portraits, whereas the top fashion illustrators would render them as they actually saw them in real life. Was there no way of achieving the same results with photography ? - George Hoyningen-Huene
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| Hiro - Yasuhiro Wakabayashi Looking for quotes 
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