110 Portraits Quotes

Following is our list of portraits quotations and slogans full of insightful wisdom and perspective about reflection of self.

Quick Jump To

Famous Portraits Quotes

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best. — Frida Kahlo

There is no self-portrait of me. — Gustav Klimt

Everyone thinks these are self-portraits but they aren't meant to be. I just use myself as a model because I know I can push myself to extremes, make each shot as ugly or goofy or silly as possible. — Cindy Sherman

The tool of every self-portrait is the mirror. You see yourself in it. Turn it the other way, and you see the world . — Agnes Varda

And I usually use myself as a model, posing in front of a mirror as I dab the strokes on the canvas. — Cleo Moore

My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph. - Richard Avedon

My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph. — Richard Avedon

A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed — Richard Avedon

Art is coming face to face with yourself. - Jackson Pollock

Art is coming face to face with yourself. — Jackson Pollock

My passport photo is one of the most remarkable photographs I have ever seen- no retouching, no shadows, no flattery-just stark me. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it. — Edward Steichen

Every portrait that is painted with feeling is a portrait of the artist, not of the sitter. — Oscar Wilde

I feel I'm anonymous in my work. When I look at the pictures, I never see myself; they aren't self-portraits. Sometimes I disappear. — Cindy Sherman

Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is. - Jackson Pollock

Painting is self-discovery. Every good artist paints what he is. — Jackson Pollock

Muhāsaba is your best selfie. — Suhaib Webb

A portrait, to be a work of art, neither must nor may resemble the sitter... one must paint its atmosphere. — Umberto Boccioni

Short Portraits Quotes

  • A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person. — Saul Leiter
  • There are only two styles of portrait painting; the serious and the smirk. — Charles Dickens
  • My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain. — Helmut Newton
  • Obviously a drawing of a person is not a real person, but a drawing of a line is a real line. — Sol LeWitt
  • I have several portraits of Jigoro Kano and a bust too, a very beautiful one. — Vladimir Putin
  • The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait. — Anatole Broyard
  • Every time I paint a portrait I lose a friend. — John Singer Sargent
  • Portraits are the most intimate photographs. The image will survive the subject. — Victor Skrebneski
  • You don't change the course of history by turning the faces of portraits to the wall. — Jawaharlal Nehru
  • [Before each of numerous portrait sittings:] Now then, with teeth or without? — Queen Elizabeth II

Portraits Image Quotes

Portraits quote It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait.
It takes a long time for a man to look like his portrait.

Self Portrait Photography Quotes

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow. Every job is a self portrait of the person who did it ... Autograph your work with excellence. — Vince Lombardi

In a sense, every work you do is a self-portrait because your paintings always reveal more about you than about your subject. Your experience of something, not the something itself, is the true underlying subject of every work you do. — Richard Schmid

It says in the Bible, in plain words, that God made a self-portrait. He created man in His own image - man and woman - for God is Love.Why should we start thinking of a god up in the clouds with wings, if He dwells within us in the spirit of Love?! — Thor Heyerdahl

I loathe my own face, and I've done self-portraits because I've had nobody else to do. — Francis Bacon

your handwriting. the way you walk. which china pattern you choose. it's all giving you away. everything you do shows your hand. everything is a self portrait. everything is a diary. — Chuck Palahniuk

I've heard many times that with all good artists it's ultimately a self-portrait even if it's an abstraction. I feel my work is very much who I am. I didn't try to make it that way; it just is. It reflects who I am and also my interests. — Joyce Tenneson

I have always loved the amateur side of photography, automatic photographs, accidental photographs with uncentered compositions, heads cut off, whatever. I incite people to make their self-portraits. I see myself as their walking photo booth. — William Klein

The self-portrait is an act of objectifying the self and in that regard is a unique form of portraiture. — Burton Silverman

I always take a close look at those who lose themselves in self portraits. They are solitary souls, prone to introspection, who have really grappled with their existence. — Young-ha Kim

The selfie era offers a big opening: everybody can do it; nowadays even five-year-olds know how to take a nude self-portrait. — Lucas Samaras

Reflection Of Self Quotes

Any child who is self-sufficient, who can tie his shoes, dress or undress himself, reflects in his joy and sense of achievement the image of human dignity which is derived from a sense of independence. — Maria Montessori

Like water which can clearly mirror the sky and the trees only so long as its surface is undisturbed, the mind can only reflect the true image of the Self when it is tranquil and wholly relaxed. — Indra Devi

Realize that your world is only a reflection of yourself and stop finding fault with the reflection. Attend to yourself, set yourself right; mentally and emotionally. The physical self will follow automatically. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The love you feel in life is a reflection of the love you feel in yourself. — Deepak Chopra

The state of your life is nothing more than a reflection of the state of your mind. — Wayne Dyer

You have to self-reflect. If you forget who you actually are, then what's the use of even looking in the mirror. — Lil Wayne

The questions you ask yourself will determine the course of your life. — Tom Bilyeu

Women need real moments of solitude and self-reflection to balance out how much of ourselves we give away. — Barbara De Angelis

Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world. - T. Harv Eker

Your outer world is a reflection of your inner world. — T. Harv Eker

There is one art of which people should be masters - the art of reflection. - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

There is one art of which people should be masters - the art of reflection. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Pictures Of Myself Quotes

I always have a picture in my head of what I want. I will literally do anything to make it happen. I will kill myself; I will run myself into the ground to make it happen how I want it to happen. — Vic Fuentes

I paint German artists whom I admire. I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too. But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair. I myself have never been able to work out why this happens. — Georg Baselitz

I hate all the old pictures of me before 2010 - and they are always the first ones to come up. That's why I don't Google myself, man. — Big Sean

Inspiration,' the false artist says,'it just comes to me.' And it shows.His pictures are as like as the four walls of his room -- morning, evening, midnight, noon. For myself, I have to search for it. The whole world is your palate, but only if you reach, take hold of what you need and pocket it. — Kurt Schwitters

People do look up to me and it makes me feel good. I made it out of a bad situation and I didn't mind bettering myself and I think that is what people respect. Most people go backwards but I was able to look at the big picture. — Master P

The most happy marriage I can picture or imagine to myself would be the union of a deaf man to a blind woman. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

I go on the Internet and look at old pictures of myself, because it is the best reminder of how far I have come and where I do not want to be. — Kelly Osbourne

I'd thought of myself as a great big motion picture star from the time I was 6. — Loretta Young

I use really crazy subject matter, like all of those pictures of me throwing up and cutting myself, it's to make people think rather than be so mediocre. Instead of just seeing another girl with implants, I want to have meaning to what I do. — Jeffree Star

Quite often I can be in a bookshop, standing beneath a great big picture of myself and paying for a book with a credit card clearly marked John Grisham, yet no one recognises me. I often say I'm a famous author in a country where no one reads. — John Grisham

Portrait Photography Quotes

Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph. — Matt Hardy

It's one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it's another thing to make a portrait of who they are. — Paul Caponigro

As time passes by and you look at portraits, the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is a vestige of a face, a face in transit. Photography has something to do with death. It's a trace. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

Photography freed painting from a lot of tiresome chores, starting with family portraits. — Pierre-Auguste Renoir

I believe that street photography is central to the issue of photography—that it is purely photographic, whereas the other genres, such as landscape and portrait photography, are a little more applied, more mixed in the with the history of painting and other art forms. — Joel Meyerowitz

What is a portrait good for, unless it shows just how the subject was seen by the painter? In the old days before photography came in a sitter had a perfect right to say to the artist: "Paint me just as I am." Now if he wishes absolute fidelity he can go to the photographer and get it. — Aubrey Beardsley

A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he's being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he's wearing or how he looks. He's implicated in what's happening, and he has a certain real power over the result. — Richard Avedon

In a portrait, I’m looking for the silence in somebody. — Henri Cartier-Bresson

Beauty can be seen in all things. — Matt Hardy

The portrait is the subject matter in photography where the problems of the media are the most visible. — Thomas Struth

People Writing About Portraits

Name Quotes Likes
Read quotes by Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman
quotes on art, life and photography

45 585
Read quotes by Richard Avedon

Richard Avedon
quotes on art, life and education

56 415
Read quotes by Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock
quotes on art, his art and life

76 1292
Read quotes by Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo
quotes on love, death and diego rivera

72 3291
Read quotes by Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt
quotes on kiss

17 237
Read quotes by Agnes Varda

Agnes Varda
quotes on love, art and nature

95 369

More Portraits Quotes

Bodybuilding is an art, your body is the canvas, weights are your brush and nutrition is your paint. We all have the ability to turn a self portrait into a masterpiece. — Kai Greene

I leave you my portrait so that you will have my presence all the days and nights that I am away from you. — Frida Kahlo

The earth paints a portrait of the sun at dawn with sunflowers in bloom. Unhappy with the portrait, she erases it and paints it again and again. — Rabindranath Tagore

Franz Kline, who became known for his black and white paintings, did a whole series of gorgeous landscapes and wonderful portraits that may still hang in Greenwich Village. — David Amram

I was going to have cosmetic surgery until I noticed that the doctor's office was full of portraits by Picasso. — Rita Rudner

Don’t try to capture a man in one synthetic portrait, but rather in lots of snapshots taken at different times and in different circumstances. — Alexander Rodchenko

THING TO TRY: If you are asked to describe a suspect to a police sketch artist, describe in precise detail, the features of the police sketch artist. This is one of the rare instances where two people can do one self-portrait. — Demetri Martin

Ethnography literally means 'a portrait of a people.' An ethnography is a written description of a particular culture - the customs, beliefs, and behavior - based on information collected through fieldwork. — Marvin Harris

Everything is a self-portrait. A diary. Your whole drug history’s in a strand of your hair. Your fingernails. The forensic details. The lining of your stomach is a document. The calluses on your hand tell all your secrets. Your teeth give you away. Your accent. The wrinkles around your mouth and eyes. Everything you do shows your hand. — Chuck Palahniuk

Painting has always been a means of self-expression for me. Therefore, I paint because I have to and need to, not necessarily because I want to. Subconsciously or not, the figures I paint are a reflection of myself and whatever mood I am in at the time, so every painting is in essence a self-portrait. — Lori Earley

In some circles Stalin has in fact been making a comeback. His portrait hangs above the dashboard of trucks, a symbol of blue- collar nostalgia for a tough leader. — Serge Schmemann

When people ask me which is your favourite portrait, they expect it to be Diana, or someone famous. But the answer is my dog, Puffy. They think I mean Puff Daddy. No, it is the dog. — Patrick Demarchelier

When I was little, we had a Golden Book that had all these Disney characters in one portrait on the first page. My dad used to read from it every night. We'd play this game of find Pluto or find Donald Duck. He'd read us stories and do all the voices. Those are great memories. — Danica McKellar

At the unveiling at the White House of the presidential portrait, President Bush pointed out that Hillary Clinton was the first sitting Senator in history to have her portrait hanging in the White House. — Eleanor Clift

If you alter or obscure the Biblical portrait of God in order to attract converts, you don't get converts to God, you get converts to an illusion. This is not evangelism, but deception. — John Piper

I often concentrate on the eyes and lips, they are great indicators of mood and feeling, and I find that I can project character into my portraits by bringing the viewer's attention to these areas. — Robert Ryan

A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth. — Richard Avedon

Through a portrait, we can potentially see everything — the history and depth of a person's life, as well as evidence of a primal universal presence. I have dedicated my life and creative energy to capturing these transcendent moments in which a connection is made between the subject, the photographer, and the viewer. — Joyce Tenneson

Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is one they would like to show the world very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe. — Irving Penn

What distinguishes a mathematical model from, say, a poem, a song, a portrait or any other kind of "model," is that the mathematical model is an image or picture of reality painted with logical symbols instead of with words, sounds or watercolors. — John L. Casti

I was told David Letterman and Kaufman had heart attacks on the same day: David Letterman's heart attack was at a hospital in NYC. Kaufman's heart attack was at the red light district in Amsterdam, Holland. I think Kaufman had more fun. You're a great artist. I just love the way you painted my portrait. — Howard Stern

Taking photographs is generally an act of 'looking at the object, whereas 'being seen' or 'showing' is what is most interest to one who does a self-portrait...self-portraits deny not only photography itself but the 20th century as an era as well...an inevitable phenomenon at the end of the 20th century. — Yasumasa Morimura

In portrait photography there is something more profound that we seek inside a person, while being painfully aware that a limitation of our medium is that the inside is recordable only insofar as it is apparent on the outside...Very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe. — Irving Penn

Type is one of the most eloquent means of expression in every epoch of style. Next to architecture, it gives the most characteristic portrait of a period and the most severe testimony of a nation's intellectual status. — Peter Behrens

In Conclusion

Which quotation resonated with you best? Did you enjoy our collection of portraits quotes? Or may be you have a slogan about portraits to suggest. Let us know using our contact form.

Citation

Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes in this collection of portraits quotations. For popular citation styles(APA, Chicago, MLA), please use this citation page.

Embed HTML Link

Copy and paste this HTML code in your webpage