“The photograph is completely abstracted from life, yet it looks like life. That is what has always excited me about photography. ”

“It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart and head.”

“Photography is demonstrably the most contemporary of art forms. It is the most vital, effective and universal means of communication of facts and ideas between peoples and nations.”

“A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it- by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir. ”

“It’s not how a photographer looks at the world that is important. It’s their intimate relations up with it.”

“My photographs are more questions than answers. I use photography as a way to help me understand why I am here. The camera helps me to see.”

“A photograph isn’t necessarily a lie, but nor is it the truth. It’s more of a fleeting, subjective impression. What I most like about photography is the moment that you can’t anticipate: you have to be constantly watching for it, ready to welcome the unexpected.”

“Ultimately photography is about who you are. It’s the seeking of truth in relation to yourself. And seeking truth becomes a habit.”

“We all know that Art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth, at least the truth that is given to us to understand.”

“Photography, which has so many narcissistic uses, is also a powerful instrument for depersonalizing our relation to the world... the camera makes exotic things near, intimate; and familiar things small, abstract, strange, much farther away.”

“The weight of words, the shock of photos... Narrative can make us understand. Photographs do something else: they haunt us. ”

““As a photographer, this is what you are after: to bring the world something new, something incredible... Here is the new way to see the world.””

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everthing to do with the way you see them.”

“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.”

“One day Allah said let there be light. There was light. Ever since that day...the principal element of a photograph was created. A machine was created and invented, that is sensitive to this light. Inventing it does not suffice. What can you add to it? What are you going to find with that light? How valuable will the thing you find for the history and future of humanity?”

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

“To take photographs is to hold one’s breath when all faculties converge in the face of fleeting reality. It is at that moment that mastering an image becomes a great physical and intellectual joy. ”

“It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter, because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the ordinary.”

“The intention to photograph is neither to satisfy people nor to fulfill any mission or responsibility, but simply to fill in one’s emptiness.”

“To take photographs means to recognize-simultaneously and within a fraction of a second- both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. ”

“His (Bresson’s) early photographs were like a set geometric trap and the photographic picture, for him, was not there until he added another element, the dimension of incidence. ”

“For me, pictures provide a means of holding, intensely, a moment of communication between one human and another.”

“Photography draws its representational power from its paradoxically dual nature:
On one hand, the realism of photographs is so convincing that they appear to be spatial and temporal facts, and we begin to believe that we can grasp the world through them… On the other hand, photography is open for any kind of projection on the viewer’s part as it is only slightly coded and discontinuous, a mere segment taken out of the world’s spatial and temporal continuity. It is a kind of mute tale that starts and stops, suggests and offers… This amalgamation of understanding and wondering.”

“Photography is a language more universal than words.”

“We emphasized the creativeness that happens at the moment of seeing over the kind that takes place in the dark room. ”

“The photographer is always trying to colonize new experiences or find new ways to look at familiar subjects- to fight against boredom.”

“ Photography is still instinctual, but I am more disciplined now. I am trying to make every frame count, just as in Tai Chi every breath counts.”