Photographic Insight Quotes

Most photographs, to me, are description, but they lack insight.

...insight, vision, moments of revelation. During those rare moments something overtakes the man and he becomes the tool of a greater Force; the servant of, willing or unwilling depending on his degree of awakeness. The photograph, then, is a message more than a mirror, and the mans a messenger who happens to be a photographer.

Several people feel I have photographed God. May be.

If it's a likeness, alone, it's not a success. If, through my portraits, you can come to know the subjects more meaningfully, if it synthesizes your feelings toward someone whose work has imprinted itself on your mind--if you see a photograph and say, 'Yes, this is the person,' with a little new insight--that is a beautiful experience.

I can zero in on subtle things because I'm holding the camera.

I don't look at other photographs much at all. I don't know why. I study my own a lot.

Your camera is the best critic there is. Critics never see as much as the camera does. It is more perceptive than the human eye.

When you meet the man [Brassai] you see at once that he is equipped with no ordinary eyes. And the sharpness of vision and depth of insight are revealed in Brassai's lifelong photographic exploration of Paris - its people, places, and things.

The simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event as well as the precise organization of forms which gives that event its proper expression... In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little human detail can become a leitmotif.

A good photograph was never what I was looking for. I like to have a point. I had to have a point or I didn't have a picture. This is what I've always found so fascinating about paparazzi pictures. They catch something unintended, on the wing... they get that thing. It's the revelation of personality.

Any photograph has multiple meanings: indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination. The ultimate wisdom of the photographic image is to say: “There is the surface. Now think – or rather feel, intuit – what is beyond it, what the reality must be like if it looks this way.’ Photographs, which cannot themselves explain anything, are inexhaustible invitations to deduction, speculation, and fantasy

To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces.

There are photographers who don't really engage with their subject. It's a really unfortunate phrase, but they take their photo and they leave with it. It works but I think it ultimately limits how profound the work can be.

I've seen so many photographers rush to do books the minute they start shooting, but one great thing about photography is that the images don't go away, so the more I sit with these images, the more I learn which ones have had the most impact.