My favorite thing is to go where I've never been. A Fresh Look at Diane Arbus
The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever... it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.
A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.
There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.
A positive attitude can really make dreams come true - it did for me.
The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed.
Photography helps people to see.
Sometimes you can tell a large story with a tiny subject.
In wisdom gathered over time I have found that every experience is a form of exploration.
Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.
A hundredth of a second here, a hundredth of a second there -- even if you put them end to end, they still only add up to one, two, perhaps three seconds, snatched from eternity.
Sometimes I do get to places just when God's ready to have somebody click the shutter.
Once destroyed, nature's beauty cannot be repurchased at any price.
I'd rather get back to making art than talk about it.
As an artist you have to have a certain amount of arrogance.
Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.
A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.
There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.
You don't take a photograph, you make it.
The truly fashionable are beyond fashion.
One of the satisfactions of a genius is his will-power and obstinacy.
Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees.
I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn't photograph them.
A good photograph is knowing where to stand.
Trust that little voice in your head that says 'Wouldn't it be interesting if...'; And then do it.
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.
I can get obsessed by anything if I look at it long enough. That's the curse of being a photographer.
Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.
Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation and execution.
I don't like to work with assistants. I'm already one too many; the camera alone would be enough.
My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.
An artist is nothing without his or her obsessions, and I have mine.
I think hard drugs are disgusting. But I must say, I think marijuana is pretty lightweight.
A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.
What the human eye observes causally and incuriously, the eye of the camera notes with relentless fidelity.
I never cared for fashion much, amusing little seams and witty little pleats: it was the girls I liked.
The great thing about this thing we call art is that it has no rules.
When I have a camera in my hand, I know no fear.
Keep it simple.
Myths and creeds are heroic struggles to comprehend the truth in the world.
Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment.
Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.
Consulting the rules of composition before taking a photograph, is like consulting the laws of gravity before going for a walk.
Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.
When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs.
When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.
Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium.
It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.
It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them.
Well, I liked it - that was the main thing.
I liked it, but I didn't think of it in terms of a career. I didn't really know; I didn't really think about it. One thing just led to another until finally I quit my job as a salesman and found myself working as a photographer.
To make pictures big is to make them more powerful.
A true portrait should, today and a hundred years from today, the Testimony of how this person looked and what kind of human being he was.
There is no question that photography has played a major role in the environmental movement.
I began taking pictures in the natural world to be able to show people what I was experiencing when I climbed and explored in Yosemite in the High Sierra.