W. Eugene Smith Quotes

The purpose of all art is to cause a deep and emotion, also one that is entertaining or pleasing. Out of the depth and entertainment comes value.

My photographs at best hold only a small length, but through them I would suggest and criticize and illuminate and try to give compassionate understanding.

Many claim I am a photographer of tragedy. In the greater sense I am not, for though I often photograph where the tragic emotion is present, the result is almost invariably affirmative.

My camera, my intentions stopped no man from falling. Nor did they aid him after he had fallen. It could be said that photographs be damned for they bind no wounds. Yet, I reasoned, if my photographs could cause compassionate horror within the viewer, they might also prod the conscience of that viewer into taking action.

I would that my photographs might be, not the coverage of a news event, but an indictment of war.

The photographer must bear the responsibility for his work and its effect ... [for] photographic journalism, because of its tremendous audience reached by publications using it, has more influence on public thinking than any other branch of photography.

The first word I would remove from the folklore of journalism is the word objective.

I've never made any picture, good or bad, without paying for it in emotional turmoil.

I think photojournalism is documentary photography with a purpose.

If I can get them to think, get them to feel, get them to see, then I've done about all that I can as a teacher.

I am an idealist. I often feel I would like to be an artist in an ivory tower. Yet it is imperative that I speak to people, so I must desert that ivory tower. To do this, I am a journalist - a photojournalist. But I am always torn between the attitude of the journalist, who is a recorder of facts, and the artist, who is often necessarily at odds with the facts. My principle concern is for honesty, above all honesty with myself ...

In music I still prefer the minor key, and in printing I like the light coming from the dark. I like pictures that surmount the darkness, and many of my photographs are that way. It is the way I see photographically. For practical reasons, I think it looks better in print too.

I try to take what voice I have and I give it to those who don't have one at all.

Up to and including the moment of exposure, the photographer is working in an undeniably subjective way. By his choice of technical approach, by the selection of the subject matterand by his decision as to the exact cinematic instant of exposure, he is blending the variables of interpretation into an emotional whole.

Negatives are the notebooks, the jottings, the false starts, the whims, the poor drafts, and the good draft but never the completed version of the work The print and a proper one is the only completed photograph, whether it is specifically shaded for reproduction, or for a museum wall.

Hardening of the categories causes art disease.

I can't stand these damn shows on museum walls with neat little frames, where you look at the images as if they were pieces of art. I want them to be pieces of life!

You can't photograph if you're not in love.

What use having a great depth of field, if there is not an adequate depth of feeling?

With considerable soul searching, that to the utmost of my ability, I have let truth be the prejudice.

Never have I found the limits of the photographic potential. Every horizon, upon being reached, reveals another beckoning in the distance. Always, I am on the threshold.