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.
Everything I paint is a portrait, whatever the subject.
One should not only photograph things for what they are but for what else they are.
The desire to discover, the desire to move, to capture the flavor, three concepts that describe the art of photography.
It is easy to take a photograph, but it is harder to make a masterpiece in photography than in any other art medium.
I have always attempted to create images that deliver the maximum amount of information about the subject.
A work should convey its entire meaning by itself, imposing it on the spectator even before he knows what the subject is.
Style is the substance of the subject called unceasingly to the surface.
Photography is an adventure just as life is an adventure. If man wishes to express himself photographically, he must understand, surely to a certain extent, his relationship to life.
It's not the subject that's cliché; it's cliché or not. But in fact, this is the way you're talking about it.
The easy bit is picking up a camera and pointing and shooting. But then you have to decide what it is you’re trying to say and express.
The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects. So that no one would say, how did you do it, where did you find it, but they would say that such things could be.
A camera alone does not make a picture. To make a picture you need a camera, a photographer and above all a subject. It is the subject that determines the interest of the photograph.
I agree that all good photographs are documents, but I also know that all documents are certainly not good photographs. Furthermore, a good photographer does not merely document, he probes the subject, he 'uncovers' it.
Whatever power there is in the urban pictures is bound to the closeness with which they skirt banality. For a shot to be good — suggestive of more than just what it is — it has to come perilously near being bad, just a view of stuff.
Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.
The political biographies most popular in the modern era often tell us less about their subjects than about the moment in which the books themselves are published.
The meaning of quality in photography's best pictures lies written in the language of vision. That language is learned by chance, not system.
A lot of photographers think that if they buy a better camera they'll be able to take better photographs. A better camera won't do a thing for you if you don't have anything in your head or in your heart.
I admire photographers who can take much more ordinarily subject matter and make it transcend that ordinariness, so that it becomes something else fresh and new. It opens this doorway. I really admire people who can do that with photography.
And only the photographer himself knows the effect he wants. He should know by instinct, grounded in experience, what subjects are enhanced by hard or soft, light or dark treatment.
Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it.
I want to make portraits and images. I don't know how. Out of despair, I just use paint anyway. Suddenly the things you make coagulate and take on just the shape you intend. Totally accurate marks, which are outside representational marks.
I have been a photographer all my life....and have made photographs of many things and for many reasons. But one thing that becomes more and more apparent is that I am simply only as good as my next photograph. That's the one that counts the most....For this reason I find it a delight to face a new day, and to develop that new roll of film. It's a great way to live.
A good portrait is incredibly hard to create, there is too much temptation to pander to the individual rather than portray them as they really were
