Famous quotes by Photographers

"We're all products of what we want to project to the world. Even people who don't spend any time, or think they don't, on preparing themselves for the world out there - I think that ultimately they have for their whole lives groomed themselves to be a certain way, to present a face to the world"

"The still must tease with the promise of a story the viewer of it itches to be told"

"People think because it's photography it's not worth as much, and because it's a woman artist, you're still not getting as much - there's still definitely that happening. I'm still really competitive when it comes to, I guess, the male painters and male artists. I still think that's really unfair"

"I'm really just using the mirror to summon something I don't even know until I see it"

"We've already seen how it's going to come in, in a truck, like it did at Oklahoma City at the Federal building or it's going to come in by plane, like it did at the World Trade Center"

"The one image that's been causing a lot of discussion is one image that I shot of a man falling head-first from the building, before the buildings fell down. He was trapped in the fire, and decided to jump and take his own life, rather than being burned"

"I always thought security was a joke at New York airports, and in U.S. airports to begin with. You can go through any European or Middle Eastern airport and things are a lot tougher"

"What is elegance? Soap and water!"

"I think I always resented the fact that people thought I was trying to entertain them with my multifaceted, chameleonlike character changes. Although I liked doing that, I wasn't out to fool people and say 'Guess which one is me.'"

"I don't analyze what I'm doing. I've read convincing interpretations of my work, and sometimes I've noticed something that I wasn't aware of, but I think, at this point, people read into my work out of habit. Or I'm just very, very smart"

"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"

"I didn't have any interest in traditional art"

"I'll see a photograph of a character and try to copy them on to my face. I think I'm really observant, and thinking how a person is put together, seeing them on the street and noticing subtle things about them that make them who they are"

"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"

"Inconsiderate, rude behavior drives me nuts. And I guess the inconsiderate rudeness of social ineptitude definitely fuels my work"

"Every time you have to come up with a new body of work for a new show, you're aware that people are just ready to rip you apart, they're just waiting for you to fall or make the slightest trip up"

"My dad was such a bigot. He was a horrible, self-centred person. He was really racist and he'd talk about the Jews and blacks and Catholics even"

"Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary"

"I can't afford a whole new set of enemies"

"All I want is the best of everything and there's very little of that left"

"More varied than any landscape was the landscape in the sky, with islands of gold and silver, peninsulas of apricot and rose against a background of many shades of turquoise and azure"

"On close inspection, this device turned out to be a funereal juke box - the result of mixing Lloyd's of London with the principle of the chewing gum dispenser"

"Mrs Woolf's complaint should be addressed to her creator, who made her, rather than me"

"I have the worst ear for criticism; even when I have created a stage set I like, I always hear the woman in the back of the dress circle who says she doesn't like blue"

"Americans have an abiding belief in their ability to control reality by purely material means... airline insurance replaces the fear of death with the comforting prospect of cash"

"Never in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly"

"San Francisco is perhaps the most European of all American cities"

"Perhaps the world's second-worst crime is boredom; the first is being a bore"

"Well, now I'm an old photographer and I still don't sell"

"To me, that is the essence of me as a photographer. It is those ideas, working with them, formulating them and eventually putting them down on paper, photographing them and then going on to the next step"