Great Throughts Treasury

"Start with a style and you are in chains, start with an idea and you are free."

"A portrait photographer depends upon another person to complete his picture. The subject imagined, which in a sense is me, must be discovered in someone else willing to take part in a fiction he cannot possibly know about."

"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."

"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."

"I always prefer to work in the studio. It isolates people from their environment. They become in a sense... symbolic of themselves. I often feel that people come to me to be photographed as they would go to a doctor or a fortune teller - to find out how they are."

"And the photographs have a reality for me that the people don't. It's through the photographs that I know them. Maybe it's in the nature of being a photographer."

"All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth."

"I believe in maniacs. I believe in type As. I believe that you’ve got to love your work so much that it is all you want to do. I believe you must betray your mistress for your work, you betray your wife for your work; I believe that she must betray you for her work. I believe that work is the one thing in the world that never betrays you, that lasts. If I were going to be a politician, if I were going to be a scientist, I would do it every day. I wouldn’t wait for Monday. I don’t believe in weekends."

"I don't really remember the day when I stood behind my camera with Henry Kissinger on the other side. I am sure he doesn't remember it either. But this photograph is here now to prove that no amount of kindness on my part could make this photograph mean exactly what he.. or even I.. wanted it to mean. It's a reminder of the wonder and terror that is a photograph."

"And if a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up. I know that the accident of my being a photographer has made my life possible."

"I can see myself as a very old man in a terrific wheelchair. Only, I won't be photographing the tree outside my window, the way Steichen did. I'll be photographing other old people."

"I think all art is about control - the encounter between control and the uncontrollable."

"If I could do what I want with my eyes alone, I would be happy."

"If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up."

"It's in trying to direct the traffic between Artiface and Candor, without being run over, that I'm confronted with the questions about photography that matter most to me."

"I often feel that people come to me to be photographed as they would go to a doctor or a fortune teller--to find out how they are. So they’re dependent on me. I have to engage them. Otherwise there’s nothing to photograph. The concentration has to come from me and involve them. Sometimes the force of it grows so strong that sounds in the studio go unheard. Time stops. We share a brief, intense intimacy. But it’s unearned. It has no past...no future. And when the sitting is over—when the picture is done—there’s nothing left except the photograph...the photograph and a kind of embarrassment. They leave… and I don’t know them. I’ve hardly heard what they’ve said. If I meet them a week later in a room somewhere, I expect they won’t recognize me. Because I don’t feel I was really there. At least the part of me that was is now in the photograph. And the photographs have a reality for me that the people don’t. It’s through the photographs that I know them. "

"If each photograph steals a bit of the soul, isn't it possible that I give up pieces of mine every time I take a picture?"

"I never wanted to be called an artist. I wanted to be called a photographer."

"Just advertising departments with legs and high heels."

"My photographs don’t go below the surface. They don’t go below anything. They’re readings of the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues. But whenever I become absorbed in the beauty of a face, in the excellence of a single feature, I feel I’ve lost what’s really there…been seduced by someone else’s standard of beauty or by the sitter’s own idea of the best in him. That’s not usually the best. So each sitting becomes a contest. "

"My photographs don"

"My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph."

"People, unprotected by their roles, become isolated in beauty and intellect and illness and confusion."

"Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me. My concern is... the human predicament; only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own."

"We all perform. It's what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or unintentionally. It's a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we'd like to be.--PERFORMANCE"

"When the sitting is over, I feel kind of embarrassed about what we"

"There"

"There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth."

"So I took my own models out to the beach. I photographed them barefoot, without gloves, running along the beach on stilts, playing leapfrog. When the pictures came in, Brodovitch laid them out on the table and the fashion editor said, ‘these can’t be published. These girls are barefoot.’ Brodovitch printed them. After that, I was launched very quickly. Those candid snapshots were in direct contrast to what was being done. I came in at a time when there weren’t any young photographers working in a free way. Everyone was tired, the war was over, Dior let the skirts down, and suddenly everything was fun. It was historically a marvelous moment for a fashion photographer to begin. I think if I were starting today, it would be much harder. "

"What ends up in your scrapbook? The pictures where you look like a good guy and a good family man, and the children look adorable - and they're screaming the next minute. I've never seen a family album of screaming people."

"Any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same."

"Click! In other words, I'm in a very controlling position, and I can bring... and I've already... if the camera's on you, your face is very concentrated. You're listening. You don't know what I'm going to say next, and now you're smiling. All these things are the things I work with."

"Camera lies all the time. It's all it does is lie, because when you choose this moment instead of this moment, when you... the moment you've made a choice, you're lying about something larger. 'Lying' is an ugly word. I don't mean lying. But any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same."

"Fashion is where I make my living. I'm not knocking it; it's a pleasure to make a living that way. Then there's the deeper pleasure of doing my portraits."

"I know that the accident of my being a photographer has made my life possible."

"Anything is an art if you do it at the level of an art."

"Faces are the ledgers of our experience."

"I am only stimulated by people, never by ideas, almost never. It is always an emotional response. It is always an emotional response. It is always between myself and myself and another person "

"How many pictures have you torn up because you hate them? What ends up in your scrapbook? The pictures where you look like a good guy and a good family man, and the children look adorable - and they're screaming the next minute. I've never seen a family album of screaming people."

"I hate cameras. They interfere; they’re always in the way. I wish: if I could just work with my eyes alone. To get a satisfactory print, one that contains all that you intended, is very often more difficult and dangerous than the sitting itself. When I’m photographing, I immediately know when I’ve got the image I really want. But to get the image out of the camera and into the open, is another matter. "

"I see pictures of myself and I always knew that what I was feeling didn't look like that guy in the pictures."

"I'm beginning to feel like this. Caught the incredible sunshine just in the nick of time today on my walk. The wall of rain approaching from the west desert was pretty spectacular, too. along with being gorgeous, it was sooo muddy which made driving home in no shoes so very fun :) if only i could post photos here! a picture is worth a thousand words, yes?"

"I was overwhelmed. Mrs. Vreeland kept calling me Aberdeen and asking me if a wedding dress didn’t make me want to cry. They’re all serious, hardworking people—they just speak a different language. "

"If you’re headed for a life that’s only involved with making money and that you hope for satisfaction somewhere else, you’re headed for a lot of trouble. And whatever replaces vodka when you’re 45 is what you’re going to be doing. "

"I've photographed just about everyone in the world. But what I hope to do is photograph people of accomplishment, not celebrity, and help define the difference once again."

"My parents put the New Yorker in my crib. I saw Vogue and Vanity Fair around the house before I could read."

"Photography has always reminded me of the second child.. trying to prove itself. The fact that it wasn’t really considered an art… that it was considered a craft... has trapped almost every serious photographer. "

"People - running from unhappiness, hiding in power - are locked within their reputations, ambitions, beliefs."

"Real people move, they bear with them the element of time. It is this fourth dimension of people that I try to capture in a photograph."

"I've worked out of a series of no's. No to exquisite light, no to apparent compositions, no to the seduction of poses or narrative. And all these no's force me to the yes. I have a white background. I have the person I'm interested in and the thing that happens between us."