Inspirational Photography Quotes

Since I love photography, below are some of my favorite photography quotes.

“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” –Dorothea Lange

“To me, photography is the simultaneous recognition, in a fraction of a second, of the significance of an event.” –Henri Cartier-Bresson

“The things that are close to you are the things you can photograph best.” –Sally Mann

“Photography, as a powerful medium of expression and communications, offers an infinite variety of perception, interpretation, and execution.” –Ansel Adams

“All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.” –Richard Avedon

“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.”  –Aaron Siskind

“Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees.” –Paul Strand

“It’s not when you press the shutter, but why you press the shutter.”  –Mary Ellen Mark

“Photographing a cake can be art.” –Irving Penn

“The picture is like a prayer, an offering, and hopefully an opening through which to seek what we don’t know, or already know and should take seriously.” –Emmet Gowin

“In Photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.” –Alfred Stieglitz

“Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it may be.”  –Edward Weston

“To me, photography is a major force in explaining man to man.” –Edward Steichen

“Look and think before opening the shutter.  The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera.” –Yousuf Karsh

“It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them.” –Man Ray

“Which of my photographs is my favorite?  The one I’m going to take tomorrow.” –Imogen Cunningham

“Everything is a subject.  Every subject has a rhythm.  To feel it is the raison detre.  The photograph is a fixed moment of such a raison detre, which lives on in itself.”  –Andre Kertesz

“What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time.” –John Berger

“Stare.  It is the way to educate your eye, and more.  Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop.  Die knowing something. You are not here long.”  –Walker Evans

“Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas.  It is a creative art.” –Ansel Adams

“I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.” –Diane Arbus