Photography Industry Quotes

Well, it was kind of an accident, because plastic is not what I meant to invent. I had just sold photograph paper to Eastman Kodak for 1 million dollars.

People buy ideas, they don't buy photographs.

I had no agent, and I was getting approached by so many people that I tried to escape for a while because I couldn't believe that world. Photography is not an industry, and suddenly an industry came to me, so I sort of had to accept it in the end and get an agent.

I don't really have any faith in anybody enjoying photographs in a large enough sense to matter. I think it's all about finances, on one side.

A lot of the point mags are going out of business. They dropped the pay tremendously and it's all because of the internet. I used to go out once a month to LA and shoot for one week. I'd make a ton of money then come back to New York and do whatever I wanted.

Did you notice what happened when digital photography arrived? Suddenly there were four times as many people on set for a shoot! It used to be a photographer, a couple of photo assistants, stylist and a fashion assistant, hair and make-up and that was about it.

For those aspiring to make a living from travel photography, it's a sad fact that the boring shots are the shots that are going to make you money.

Trying to find this industry's tendency to celebrate the physical is a waste of time. So I'm happy to play the game. But I am also thirsty for input. I'm not a dunce whose only skill is knowing how to take a photograph, you know? And at the end of the day, I think it makes me slightly less replaceable.

It's really, really hard to make it as a fine-art photographer exclusively.

You know, you get into the business of commercial photography, and that's all you do is photograph what you know. That's what you're hired for.

Well, now I'm an old photographer and I still don't sell.

I lost count of how many times photographers and designers would tell me to lose a bit of weight, especially as I got a little older and my body started to develop.

Rex has photographers around the world - it's a higher touch business: there are a lot of relationships involved. If you throw an event, there are certain photographers you've worked with before and you want there.

These days, photographers have expensive contracts with actresses, but then the actresses have to have their names written in the column because nobody recognizes them. That's kind of strange.

What I find interesting is working in a society with certain taboos and fashion photography is about that kind of society. To have taboos, then to get around them that is interesting.

I have had the privilege of working with the best in the business, from photographers to designers to magazines. There's not much more to ask for but I'm still looking forward to one day working with photographers Mert and Marcus, Tim Walker and Nick Knight.

It's not easy for most girls to stand in next-to-nothing and listen to photographers and stylists commenting on how they look.

It's more difficult now, to be a Geographic photographer, than it was when I came along. And it wasn't easy at that time.

In some areas, [Getty Images has] more images than the rest of the market put together. But libraries are being built up at a terrific pace. A photographer in a lifetime will produce maybe a million images, and there are about 15,000 professionals at work out there.

There are those photographers who have made a whole career doing commercial work but have never had a museum show, and then there are others who've only had museum shows but couldn't survive for five seconds in the real world of photography. But I've done absolutely everything.

The photographic industry was the refuge of all the painters who couldn't make it, either because they had no talent or because they were too lazy to finish their studies. Hence this universal infatuation was not only characterized by blindness and stupidity, but also by vindictiveness.

There are 65 to 70 photography galleries in New York alone. In the U.K., there are no more than five, and they're all in London.

I started wearing high heels when I first worked with Mario Testino. He is tall; I had to be at his height. And I have never stopped since then.

My least favorite photographer to have would be myself. Someone who wanted a career at National Geographic. Because it's almost mathematically impossible to achieve that.

I guess that's what I was: a set of abs. And they lit the abs and shot the abs and sent the abs on their way. The photographer didn't look at my face once. I was humiliated.