Elliott Erwitt Quotes

Painting allows me to use other portions of my brain pleasurably. Irony plays no part in what or how I paint. I paint the particular subject matter not to make polemical points but because I am interested in the human imprint on the landscape. I paint the landscape of my time and place with the stuff in it.

I always have a good reason for taking something out but I never have one for putting something in. And I don't want to, because that means that the picture is being painted predigested.

Going into a shoot not fully knowing what I want to do - that excitement, that thing that happens, is just so powerful and makes such great pictures.

Great films happen, and no one can make them on intention.

It's seldom you make a great picture. you have to milk the cow quite a lot to get plenty of milk to make a little cheese.

I'm not responsible for my photographs. Photography is not documentary, but intuition, a poetic experience. It's drowning yourself, dissolving yourself, and then sniff, sniff, sniff - being sensitive to coincidence. You can't go looking for it; you can't want it, or you won't get it. First you must lose your self. Then it happens.

I'm not very eloquent about things like this, but I think that writing and photography go together. I don't mean that they are related arts, because they're not. But the person doing it, I think, learns from both things about accuracy of the eye, about observation, and about sympathy toward what is in front of you... It's about honesty, or truth telling, and a way to find it in yourself, how to need it and learn from it.

I do not correct my first imaginings by my second--well, yes, perhaps a word or so, but only to vary, not to delete. I want to represent the course of my humors and I want people to see each part at its birth.

I can't say what makes a picture. I can't say. It's mysterious.

I try to paint what I have found and not what I look for. In art, intentions are of little importance.

Photography is only intuition, a perpetual interrogation - everything except a stage set.

I find that the quest to be perfect and make perfect music is like a black whole. I realize that you can come with the intention to capture a vibe and use a formula, but you have to accept that most of the time its not going to be what you envisioned and you might manifest something better. I think that's been the hardest thing to wrap my head around that most ideas we go for ends up sounding different. I think art in general should be about enjoying the process and the experience. All that matters is if you feel the music and it captures the element your going for.

For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression.

People go, 'What do you want to do?' What do you want to do? What are you feeling? Going into a shoot not fully knowing what I want to do—that excitement, that thing that happens, is just so powerful and makes such great pictures.

Art does not come from thinking but from responding.

So much of art-making is about reducing things to the essentials, so I don't feel particularly crippled by this. I don't want it to look natural because then I would be making a documentary film.

Being creative is my idea of heaven. I'm just incredibly fortunate that I can do it in artwork. Watercolor is what I started out with. What I love about watercolor is that a lot of happy accidents occur.

I'll take anything and slap it on a canvas.

There is the danger of over preparation, of loss of spontaneity; over rehearsal is the most terrible thing you can imagine. We do have a very close association between costume and set designer, though. And the cameraman is very important, of course.

It's very important to understand that we never do the same thing twice; each of our projects is unique. We'll never do another 'Gates.' Each project is a unique image. We do not know in advance how the work will look. I do preparatory drawings, but they are only projections of our vision.

A creation needs not only subjectivity, but also objectivity.

People don't realize that one picture for you is just one picture. But for me, I take a thousand pictures a day. That adds up. It's tough getting somewhere on time when you have to stop that much.

Photography is an immediate reaction, drawing is a meditation.

These rough sketches, which are born in an instant in the heat of inspiration, express the idea of their author in a few strokes, while on the other hand too much effort and diligence sometimes saps the vitality and powers of those who never know when to leave off.

I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help.