Photographs Quotes

“There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.”
― Ansel Adams

“When I look at my old pictures, all I can see is what I used to be but am no longer. I think: What I can see is what I am not.”
― Aleksandar Hemon, The Lazarus Project

“A photograph shouldn't be just a picture, it should be a philosophy.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“It's funny, but certain faces seem to go in and out of style. You look at old photographs and everybody has a certain look to them, almost as if they're related. Look at pictures from ten years later and you can see that there's a new kind of face starting to predominate, and that the old faces are fading away and vanishing, never to be seen again.”
― Alan Moore, Watchmen

“For me, the subject of the picture is always more important than the picture.”
― diane arbus

“What I'm trying to describe is that it's impossible to get out of your skin into somebody else's.... That somebody else's tragedy is not the same as your own.”
― Diane Arbus

“Old photographs are very deceiving, they give us the illusion that we are alive in them, and it's not true, the person we are looking at no longer exists, and if that person could see us, he or she would not recognise him or herself in us, 'Who's that looking at me so sadly,' he or she would say.”
― José Saramago, All the Names

“One thing that struck me early is that you don’t put into a photograph what’s going to come out. Or, vice versa, what comes out is not what you put in.”
― Diane Arbus

“Out here
are books and magazines-
asleep, carrying the entire world in them,
and standing there
are walls and windows, staring at me,
and leaves of letters here-- about to go melting
quite like the heart itself,
and photographs-- lost in themselves
as if-
they're thinking of someone.”
― Suman Pokhrel

“Later, when she sees the photographs for the first time, she will be surprised at how calm her face looks - how steady her gaze, how erect her posture. In the picture her eyes will be slightly closed, and there will be a shadow on her neck. The shawl will be draped around her shoulders, and her hands will rest in her lap. In this deceptive photograph, she will look a young woman who is not at all disturbed or embarrassed, but instead appears to be rather serious. And she wonders if, in its ability to deceive, photography is not unlike the sea, which may offer a benign surface to the observe even as it conceals depths and current below.”
― Anita Shreve, Fortune's Rocks

“Max had once read in one of his father's books that some childhood images become engraved in the mind like photographs, like scenes you can return to again and again and will always remember, no matter how much time goes by.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Prince of Mist

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

“In my photographic work I was always especially entranced, said Austerlitz, by the moment when the shadows of reality, so to speak, emerge out of nothing on the exposed paper, as memories do in the middle of the night, darkening again if you try to cling to them, just like a photographic print left in the developing bath too long.”
― W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz

“Besides the tablecloths, the decor is all old photographs and postcards that they scrounged up from wherever, because you know how white people love their history right up until it's true.”
― Danielle Evans, The Office of Historical Corrections

“I used to capture the vastness and the immensity of the world and confine it to the limited pages of the parchment.”
― Hark Herald Sarmiento

“LaMont, the truth is that the world is incredibly, incredibly, unbelievably old. You suffer with the stunted desire caused by one of its oldest lies. Do not believe the photographs. Fame is not the exit from any cage.”
― David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

“Photographs are the reflection of untold stories, unseen beauties, unexpressed emotions, and the unheard songs of life.”
― Debasish Mridha

“Suppose every photo of me ever taken was an infinitesimal piece? Every magazine ad, every negative, every frame of motion picture film - another tiny molecule of me, stolen away to feed an audience that is *never* satiated. And when someone is fully consumed - vampirized - they move on, still hungry, to pick their next victim by making him or her a star. That's why they're called consumers. ("Red Light")”
― David J. Schow, Seeing Red

“Any files I give to the model are downsized (typically 800x1200 pixels)... By not giving out my high resolution files, they cannot be used without my knowledge.”
― A.K. Nicholas, True Confessions of Nude Photography

“Franny?” Rosy held up the four little Franks. “Could I keep one of these?”
Franny looked at her hard for a moment then nodded. “’Course you can, hen,” she said, “But that’s not your daddy.”
Rosy gaped. “It’s not?”
“That’s my wee darling. That’s my wee Frankie before the devil twisted him into a monster.” She poked her finger into another hole where Frank’s face should have been. Her eyes glinted.”
― R.G. Manse, Screw Friendship

“I never felt able to describe my emotional reactions when I first came face to face with indisputable evidence of Nazi brutality and ruthless disregard of every shred of decency.

I have never at any other time experienced an equal sense of shock.

I visited every nook and cranny of the camp because I felt it my duty to be in a position from then on to testify at first hand about these things in case there ever grew up at home the belief or assumption that "the stories of Nazi brutality were just propaganda." Some members of the visiting party were unable to go through the ordeal. I not only did so but as soon as I returned to Patton's headquarters that evening I sent communications to both Washington and London, urging the two governments to send instantly to Germany a random group of newspaper editors and representative groups from the national legislatures. I felt that the evidence should be immediately placed before the American and British publics in a fashion that would leave no room for cynical doubt.”
― Dwight D. Eisenhower

“Writing and photographing is not about copying reality and reproducing it perfectly. It's about showing it to others as you see it yourself.”
― Katja Michael

“My family lost most of our old photos. And now? We scan the backgrounds of photos belonging to others just to catch glimpses of ourselves.”
― Damon Thomas, Some Books Are Not For Sale

“A picture can be taken so quickly, and reproductions of it can be so accurate, that it can be impossible not to see it again and again over the years. After a while, the effect is numbing. I have seen the original Ecstasy of St. Francis many times, and I've also seen it projected in classrooms, in books, and even on postcards. With more popular paintings, the situation is even worse. Paintings like Munch's The Scream and Leonardo's Mona Lisa have been effectively ruined for me. Not only have I forgotten my first encounters with them, which were sometimes intense, but I have almost forgotten that they mean anything”
― James Elkins, Pictures and Tears

“Having to wait to develop my pictures before I can see them, is part of the fun of film photography. However, when I see them I always ask myself, "Why the heck did I shoot that?” - Chris Geiger”
― Chris Geiger

“Cameras are supposed to help you relive a moment, but if you never live the moment in the first place, because you are too busy taking pictures, how will you relive it!”
― Abhijit Naskar, Visvavictor: Kanima Akiyor Kainat

“The sun creates your shadow; the mirror takes your shadow into itself; if you take a photo of the mirror, your shadow will be a photo standing in the mirror! Those who see the photo congratulate the photographer, forget the sun, and forget the mirror! While celebrating beauty, don't forget those who contributed to its creation!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan

“In the future, readers of newspapers and magazines will probably view news pictures more as illustrations than as reportage, since they will be well aware that they can no longer distinguish between a genuine image and one that has been manipulated. Even if news photographers and editors resist the temptations of electronic manipulation, as they are likely to do, the credibility of all reproduced images will be diminished by a climate of reduced expectations. In short, photographs will not seem as real as they once did.”
― Mark Z. Danielewski, House of Leaves

“As I wander through my sparse forest of memories, photographs have been my most reliable compass.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Memory Police

“It would be a shame if you didn't applaud the photographer when you saw a beautiful photo; but you should applaud not only him but also the camera he used! Is that enough? Not enough! If the people in the photo weren't there, that beautiful photo wouldn't exist, so a big round of applause for them too!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan