Capturing Reality Quotes

Filming, for me, is a way of approaching, little by little - of getting closer and closer to my subject. And that subject itself can transform, or it can remain the same.

I feel more in touch with the world when I'm filming.

Photography is truth.

The violence of language consists in its effort to capture the ineffable and, hence, to destroy it, to seize hold of that which must remain elusive for language to operate as a living thing.

To photograph is to hold one's breath, when all faculties converge to capture fleeting reality. It's at that precise moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy.

My films are the celebration of reality, of life, of my friends, of actual daily life that passes and is gone tomorrow. We don't pay attention to it when it happens.

Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.

The herculean task of a photographer is to capture a momentary frame as beautiful in reality, as it would be in a dream.

... A power of obtaining veracity in the representation of material and tangible things, which, within certain limits and conditions, is unimpeachable, has now been placed in the hands of all men, almost without labour. (1853)

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.

To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things.

I'm sometimes called a 'documentary photographer' but... a man operating under that definition could take a sly pleasure in the disguise. Very often I'm doing one thing when I'm thought to be doing another.

Part of the role of photography is to exaggerate, and that is an aspect that I have to puncture. I do that by showing the world as I really find it.

To me documentary photography means making a picture so that the viewer doesn’t think about the man who made the picture. At its esthetic core is very old tradition in art: naturalism. And its purpose is to document all facets of social relationships.

With photography a new language has been created. Now for the first time it is possible to express reality by reality. We can look at an impression as long as we wish, we can delve into it and, so to speak, renew past experiences at will.

And what we called photojournalism, the photos seen in places like Life magazine, didn't interest me either. They were just not good-there was no art there. The first person who I respected immensely was Henri Cartier-Bresson. I still do.

I think there are two types of photographers, those who want to document the world and those who want to create their own world. I am more interested in documenting the world and presenting it to people with the question attached, 'Does this make any sense to you?'

I see things going on before my eyes and I photograph them as they are, without trying to change them. I don't warn people beforehand. That's why I'm a chronicler. I speak about us and I speak about myself.

The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent. From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here; the duration of the transmission is insignificant; the photograph of the missing being, as Sontag says, will touch me like the delayed rays of a star.

How do you document real life, when real life's getting more like fiction each day.

Filming is a witnessing process. You don't try to control it, even though sometimes you wish you could because it can go really, really wrong for you.

Actually, documentary pictures include every subject in the world - good, bad, indifferent. I have yet to see a fine photograph which is not a good document.

One view of photography is that it is a zen-like act which captures reality with its pants down - so that the vital click shows the anatomy bare. In this, the photographer is invisible but essential. A computer releasing the shutter would always miss the special moment that the human sensibility can register. For this work, the photographer's instinct is his aid, his personality a hindrance.

I was only photographing in words the reality of it all.

What is the use of good painting? We want a spell cast upon the optical part of our existence! We seldom really see the world, but when we do, we become as still as a picture.