Bill Brandt Quotes

Photography has no rules, it is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved.

There's no particular class of photograph that I think is any better than any other class. I'm always and forever looking for the image that has spirit! I don't give a damn how it got made.

One reason I was interested in photography was to get away from the preciousness of the art object.

Photography is not a sport. It has no rules. Everything must be dared and tried!

The camera would miss it all. A magnificent picture is never worth a thousand perfect words. Ansel Adams can be a great artist, but he can never be Shakespeare. His tools are too literal.

For me the true business of photography is to capture a bit of reality (whatever that is) on film...if, later, the reality means something to someone else, so much the better.

If you want to make pictures and enjoy making them, you better go out and make something that a lot of people want to see. And then they'll turn you lose and let you make what you want. And then maybe you can do some of the things that you want to do. But as a beginner, you haven't got a chance.

There's always a certain amount of camera improvisation.

You don't take a photograph, you make it.

I think everything's fair in art and how you perceive a character.

Photographers tend to have the non-judgmental gene

Literally, FX is like, 'How can we foster your vision?' My vision is pretty much taking pictures of the way I see my life.

I'm just like a photographer or a director. Of course I have an opinion, but I don't think my opinion, or what I want to say... is so obvious 'cause that's not my job. My job is just to give a point of view, not more than that.

I'm very lucky that I'm not a photographer for hire - people hire me for me. I go into every commercial work with an art focus, with that lens; every brand I've worked for just lets me do whatever I want to do. I have full creative freedom.

I wanted to go so I could learn the rules and conventions in order to break them later on.

Art is not journalism. In art, you don't make it to convey a message.

The formula for doing a good job in photography is to think like a poet.

I know some photographs that are extraodrinary in their power and conviction, but it is difficult in photography to overcome the superficial power or subject; the concept and statement must be quite convincing in themselves to win over a dramatic and compelling subject situation.

Arguments against photography ever being considered a fine art are: the element of chance which enters in, — finding things ready-made for a machine to record, and of course the mechanics of the medium. I say that chance enters into all branches of art.

Whatever it takes to get the image to reach that level is what that photographer needs to do.

I am sometimes accused by my peers of printing my pictures too dark. All I can say is that it goes with the mood of melancholy that is induced by witnessing at close quarters such intractable situations of conflict and joylessness.

I'm trying to paint a picture of what I have seen and what moved me, as well as I can. That's all.

It is easy to take a photograph, but it is harder to make a masterpiece in photography than in any other art medium.

You see what you think, you see what you feel, you are what you see If with the camera you can make others see it - that is photography.

I have been a photographer all my life....and have made photographs of many things and for many reasons. But one thing that becomes more and more apparent is that I am simply only as good as my next photograph. That's the one that counts the most....For this reason I find it a delight to face a new day, and to develop that new roll of film. It's a great way to live.