Capturing the Unseen Quotes

If it can be written, or thought, it can be filmed.

Life is not significant details, illuminated by a flash, fixed forever. Photographs are.

Anything you can imagine, you can put on film.

An unnoticed corner of the world suddenly becomes noticed, and when you notice something clearly and see it vividly, it becomes sacred. (On Robert Frank's photography)

The things worth writing about, and the things worth reading about, are the things that feel almost beyond description at the start and are, because of that, frightening.

I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.

The camera is not only an extension of the eye but of the brain. It can see sharper, farther, nearer, slower, faster than the eye. It can see by invisible light. It can see in the past, present, and future. Instead of using the camera only to reproduce objects, I wanted to use it to make what is invisible to the eye - visible.

What was any art but a mould in which to imprison for a moment the shining elusive element which is life itself - life hurrying past us and running away, too strong to stop, too sweet to lose.

To photograph reality is to photograph nothing.

Cinema at its best can express something of the pure irreducible fact of things.

There is nothing as mysterious as a fact clearly described. I photograph to see what something will look like photographed.

I was drawn to street photography because there are pictures everywhere there: a woman holding a dog, a baby screaming to be put in a pram, kids playing punch ball, stores with huge barrels of kosher pickles outside. I wanted to photograph life, and here it was.

It is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque.

Photograph the world as it is. Nothing's more interesting than reality.

In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little, human detail can become a Leitmotiv.

Our job as writers, as far as I can tell, is to attempt to express what seems inexpressible.

Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.

Photography imitates everything and expresses nothing.

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.

One of my favorite photographers is Ruvan Wijesooriya, who takes most of the LCD photos. His work is incredibly colloquial and raw.

For my first book, 'New York,' I had one camera and two lenses. It was fotografia povera.

I think that's the strength of photography - to decide the decisive moment, to click in the moment to come up with a picture that never comes back again.

A good film to me is like lightning in a bottle.

My dream concept is that I have a camera and I am trying to photograph what is essentially invisible. And every once in a while I get a glimpse of her and I grab that picture.

Photography is about finding out what can happen in the frame. When you put four edges around some facts, you change those facts.