Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but read more

Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.

If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, read more

If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this.

Blessed be the inventor of photography! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that read more

Blessed be the inventor of photography! It has given more positive pleasure to poor suffering humanity than anything else that has "cast up" in my time -- this art by which even the "poor" can possess themselves of tolerable of their absent dear ones.

I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else. Excitement about the subject read more

I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else. Excitement about the subject is the voltage which pushes me over the mountain of drudgery necessary to produce the final photograph.

Many pictures turn out to be limp translations of the known world instead of vital objects which create an intrinsic read more

Many pictures turn out to be limp translations of the known world instead of vital objects which create an intrinsic world of their own. There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph.

The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the read more

The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist, but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking.

Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.

Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.

There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.

There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.