Alfred Stieglitz Quotes

My pictures are my eyes. I photograph what I see - and what I want to see.

Fashion photographers are the new painters.

A photographer without a magazine behind him is like a farmer without fields.

Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.

Photography, for me, is something I can control fully. It's wholly my own expressions.

The camera is not the instrument. People are always the instrument.

Photography has always been a major part of my vision: my excuse for meddling with what the world looks like.

The key is to photograph your obsessions, whether that’s old people’s hands or skyscrapers. Think of a blank canvas, because that’s what you’ve got, and then think about what you want to see. Not anyone else.

I love painting. As far as photography is concerned, I understand nothing.

The next time you pick up a camera think of it not as an inflexible and automated robot, but as a flexible instrument which you must understand to properly use. An electronic and optical miracle creates nothing on its own! Whatever beauty and excitement it can represent exist in your mind and spirit to begin with.

I think I came alive when I started photography.

I don't shoot kittens with balls of wool. I don't shoot sunsets. What draws me? Ironic, surreal, unexplained, timely moments.

Photography is better than art. It is a solar phenomenon in which the artist collaborates with the sun.

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.

You may be perfect in playing the piano, and not be creative; you may play the piano most brilliantly, and not be a musician. You may be able to handle color, to put paint on canvas most cleverly, and not be a creative painter. You may create a face, an image out of a stone, because you have learned the technique, and not be a master creator. Creation comes first, not technique.

The camera’s not a camera, really. It’s an open door we need to walk through. It’s up to us to keep moving our feet.

Anxious, inexperienced writers obey rules. Rebellious, unschooled writers break rules. Artists master the form.

The very idea of photography is as Oliver Wendell Holmes said in the 19th century, "it's a mirror with a memory."

Photography's like this baby that needs to be fed all the time. It's always hungry.

To talk about photos rather than making them seems idiotic to me. It's as though I went on and on about a woman I adored instead of making love to her.

For me photography has been a profession, an avocation. Now it has become a way of life.

Photography is art when it's used by an artist.

Photography appears to be an easy activity; in fact it is a varied and ambiguous process in which the only common denominator among its practitioners is in the instrument.

I feel like I'm doing something that's worthwhile. I feel like I'm showing something other people haven't shown. I don't get to talk to the people who I photograph, I just go, along, banging away. So I don't really have a relationship with them. A lot of people think it's very important. I don't. It's like love at first sight. I have an impression when I see somebody, and I have an idea of who they are, or what they are.