Elliott Erwitt Quotes

This thing called the camera, that takes everything in equally, taught me a lot about how to see.

You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

[To become a poet] The most important thing is to pay attention. The next would probably be to read; it's so important to pay attention. It keeps you from being bored, and I might add it keeps you from being boorish.

When I walk with a camera, I walk from shot to shot, reading the light on a calibrated meter. When I walk without a camera, my own shutter opens, and the moment's light prints on my own silver gut. When I see this second way I am above all an unscrupulous observer.

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

A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.

If you're really in the process of photographing, you are absolutely aware. You are looking.

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

A photograph is usually looked at - seldom looked into.

Drawing makes you see things clearer, and clearer and clearer still, until your eyes ache.

I was aware that the teaching of drawing was being stopped almost 30 years ago. And I always said, 'The teaching of drawing is the teaching of looking.' A lot of people don't look very hard.

Photography helps people to see.

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 extraordinary.

There's a lot of different things that make me want to take photos. A lot of it is, for a long time I've been obsessed with the thought of time travel with my camera.

To be able to take my pictures, I have to look, all the time, at the people and places I care about.

I see through my eyes; the camera is just a machine to record it for me.

Painting is an illusion, a piece of magic, so what you see is not what you see. I don't know what a painting is; who knows what sets off even the desire to paint? It might be things, thoughts, a memory, sensations, which have nothing to do directly with painting itself. They can come from anything and anywhere.

Leica, schmeica. The camera doesn't make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But you have to see.

The camera is for us a tool, not a pretty mechanical toy ... people think far too much about techniques and not enough about seeing.

It's about reacting to what you see, hopefully without preconception. You can find pictures anywhere. It's simply a matter of noticing things and organising them. You just have to care about what's around you and have a concern with humanity and the human comedy.

I've no doubt that those photographs i took will make people look at everything in a more interesting way - the little tear on one piece of paper, the shadow on another. But good painting has always done that - made you see things. And the most ordinary can be the most extraordinary.

You can find pictures anywhere. It's simply a matter of noticing things and organizing them.

I never take pictures. Skies are much larger in reminiscences and my friends are much better-looking. Photos crop reality into little squares; instead, I have very good binoculars.

Photography is simply a function of noticing things.

Art is born in attention.