Purposeful Photography

★★★★★★★★★★

“I have more of a relationship with the subject than I do with my camera equipment. To me, camera equipment is like a tin of shoe polish and a brush – I use that as a tool, but my basic camera is my emotion and my eyes. It’s not anything to do with the wonderful cameras I use.” Sir Don McCullin

“In my photography, I always lean towards the underprivileged because that’s where I came from. When I went to the wars, I attempted to go and stand by those who were being trodden on.”  Sir Don McCullin

“Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures.” Don McCullin, A Life’s Work in Photography 

“So many times I’ve photographed stories that show the degradation of the planet. I had one idea to go and photograph the factories that were polluting, and to see all the deposits of garbage. But, in the end, I thought the only way to give us an incentive, to bring hope, is to show the pictures of the pristine planet – to see the innocence.” Sebastiao Salgado

“There are moments that you suffer a lot, moments you won’t photograph. There are some people you like better than others. But you give, you receive, you cherish, you are there. When you are really there, you know when you see the picture later what you are seeing.” Sebastiao Salgado

“I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapon against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty.” Gordon Parks

“The guy who takes a chance, who walks the line between the known and unknown, who is unafraid of failure, will succeed.” Gordon Parks

“I have for a long time, worked under the premise that everyone is worth something; that every life is valuable to our own existence. Consequently, I’ve felt it was my camera’s responsibility to shed light on any condition that hinders growth or warps the spirit of those trapped in the ruinous evils of poverty… To me they were ghosts of my own past.”  Gordon Parks

“If you’re photograph is not good, it’s because you’re not close enough.” Robert Capa

“It’s not enough to have talent, you also have to be Hungarian.”  Robert Capa

“Robert Capa said, ‘If you’re photograph is not good, it’s because you’re not close enough.’ I heard that many years after the way I had discovered how I wanted to take photographs or film. “ William Klein

“I liked Cartier-Bresson’s pictures, but I didn’t like his set of rules. So I reversed them. I thought his view that photography must be objective was nonsense. Because the photographer who pretends he’s wiping all the slates clean in the name of objectivity doesn’t exist.” William Klein

“I don’t get to talk to the people who I photograph…. So I don’t really have a relationship with them. A lot of people think it’s very important. I don’t. It’s like love at first sight. I have an impression when I see somebody, and I have an idea of who they are, or what they are.” William Klein

“Needing to have reality confirmed and experience enhanced by photographs is an aesthetic consumerism to which everyone is now addicted.” Susan Sontag, On Photography