Eve Arnold Quotes

If the photographer is interested in the people in front of his lens, and if he is compassionate, it's already a lot. The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.

It doesn't matter if you use a box camera or you use a Leica; the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing.

Themes recur again and again in my work.

I look for a sense of reality with everything I did. I didn't work in a studio, I didn't light anything. I found a way of working which pleased me because I didn't have to frighten people with heavy equipment. It was that little black box and me and £5 worth of film in my pocket or maybe it was only £2 in those days.

What has changed is that when I photographed, most people that I photographed didn't have the right of refusal on their work. It would take a Marilyn Monroe at her height to be able to dictate that.

I find going back through things sometimes exhilarating because I find things I didn't know I had, and sometimes it's very off putting because there are things I never quite finished, and there's nothing at all to do about it now.

A studio session ... provides the greatest chance for control. Even though there is total freedom, I still dislike studio photography and the contrived images that usually stem from this genre.

If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given.

What do you hang on the walls of your mind?

I had in mind a long career.

If the chemistry is right between star and photographer and the geometry of the pictures pleases the star, often the two people end up with a long-term professional friendship during which they continue to work together and to produce highly personal images.

I love the idea I can go off with a single camera and a few rolls of film unencumbered ... I was not interested in the illusion of reality, I wanted to get close to what was happening.

What drove me and kept me going over the decades? If I had to use a single word, it would be 'curiosity.'

You should never reveal your true age.

I have been poor and I wanted to document poverty; I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth; I was interested in politics and I wanted to know how it affected our lives; I am a woman and I wanted to know about women.

Lesson number one: Pay attention to the intrusion of the camera.

I found a way of working which pleased me because I didn't have to frighten people with heavy equipment. It was that little black box and me.

I realise that I had the best of serious picture journalism. There was an innocence in our approach, especially in the 1950s and 1960s when we naively believed that by holding a mirror up to the world we could help - no matter how little - to make people aware of the human condition.

I don't see anybody as either ordinary or extraordinary. I see them simply as people in front of my lens.

I can't hold a camera anymore.