Araki Photography Quotes

It never seemed important to me that my photos be published. It's important that I take them. There were periods where I didn't have money, and I would imagine that someone would come to me and say: 'Here is money, you can go do your photography, but you must not show it.' I would have accepted right away. On the other hand, if someone had come to me saying: 'Here is money to do your photography, but after your death it must be destroyed,' I would have refused. ~ Josef Koudelka

Photography as a subject is a good one. Its history is only about 150 years ... You only have to know about twenty-five or thirty names and that's it. All you need. In painting there are more than 1,000. ~ William Wegman

Never say you're going back - SHOOT IT NOW! ~ Jay Maisel

You can go into all sorts of situations with a camera and people will think they should serve it. ~ Susan Sontag

Every adventure I've ever had with love and photography has ended in a similar misadventure. As is often the case, the rush of longing detaches from its object of desire, and my photographic ghosts lead me back to myself, alone. ~ Justine Kurland

If the photographer isn't going to pay attention to the picture he is making, that if he thinks the camera is just a machine and not an avenue of expression, then he has no business asking anyone for anything, let alone their time and interest. Don't show the world, he said, invent the world. ~ Whitney Otto

Polaroid, you know, goes against everything that photography is now. You can't make multiples. Only one exists. I love that. By the way, while we've been talking I've now seen a total of three people I know walking on 8th street. ~ Laurel Nakadate

If people are fans of 'Mindfreak,' they are going to be so excited with 'Believe.' They are actually going to see those illusions that people think can only happen with trick photography. ~ Criss Angel

Videos are more like photography. It's not as much about trying to tell a story as it is creating images. ~ Tatyana Ali

Some speak of a return to nature, I wonder where they could have been? ~ Frederick Sommer

For me, photography only stopped because I was selling books. ~ Ben Schott

It is easy to imagine fantasy as physical and myth as real. We do it almost every moment. We do this as we dream, as we think, and as we cope with the world about us. But these worlds of fantasy that we form into the solid things around us are the source of our discontent. They inspire our search to find ourselves. ~ Walker Evans

It's important to let your subjects be themselves. ~ Herb Ritts

[Photography] has become more and more subtle, more and more modern, and the result is that it is now incapable of photographing a tenement or a rubbish heap without transfiguring it. Not to mention a river dam or electric cable factory: in front of these, photography can now only say, How beautiful! ~ Walter Benjamin

There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are. ~ Ernst Haas

Everyone concedes that photography is now a medium of exchange as much as a mode of documentation ... photographing has become the visual equivalent of cellphone chatter. ~ Geoffrey Batchen

I took a workshop from him a few months after that. That experience changed my whole approach to photography. At that workshop in Yosemite in 1973 I decided I wanted to try and see if I could pursue this for myself, and I'm still trying. ~ John Sexton

And even being in the middle of it, at the LVMH group with Dior, there are certain parts of it that I'm just not really in, because it's not in me or my nature. The whole scene around it, the events, the photography ... It's never really been my thing. But I don't take a critical position on people who are very much about that either. ~ Raf Simons

I dreamed Kim Kardashian was sobbing but her makeup was still flawless. She stood on stage in a tight little cleavage squishing dress holding her award in her arms. Her out of focus, uninspired photograph of sunflowers and bluebonnets won Photograph of the Year in her church's photography contest. I was kind of bitter about it but I didn't attend her church and I didn't enter the contest. ~ Misti Rainwater-Lites

If we examine a work of ordinary art, by means of a powerful microscope, all traces of resemblance to nature will disappear - but the closest scrutiny of the photogenic drawing discloses only a more absolute truth, a more perfect identity of aspect with the thing represented. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

Satellite photography in the 1970's gave rise to the long-range weather forecast, a month at a time. This in turn gave rise to the observation that the long-range weather forecast was wrong most of the time. In turn, this gave rise to the dropping of the long-range weather forecast and to the admission that really accurate forecasting could only cover the next day or two, and not always then. ~ Miles Kington

And one has to remember that no photography can pretend to show the truth. A picture only shows a given situation under a very specific perspective, consciously or not, openly or not, relevantly or not. Photographers have to accept they can just convey fragments of illusory realities and relate their own intimate experience of the world. In this process of fictionalising an unreachable truth, it's up to them to impose their doubts about any photographic truth, or accept being impotent pawns in the mediatic game. ~ Antoine D'Agata

Sensuality is for you, not about you. It's for you in a sense that you are allowed to indulge all of your senses and taste the goodness of this world and beyond. It's also for you in a sense that you're allowed to curate and express yourself in an authentic way (i.e. in the way you dress, communicate, live, love, play, etc.).

However, sensuality is not ABOUT you, it's about those to whom you were brought here to touch and inspire. It's about the joy and pleasure you're here to bring. You didn't come here for yourself nor empty-handed, but you came here bearing special gifts. You were brought here to be a vessel of sensual innovation and a conveyor of heaven's most deepest pleasures.

Your passion is an indication of the sensual gift(s) you were endowed with before you made your grand entry into this world. Your divine mandate now is to exploit every sensual gift you have to the fullest whether it's music, photography, boudoir or fashion modeling, etc.

If you have a love for fashion, always dress impeccably well like my friend Kefilwe Mabote. If you have a love for good food and wine, create culinary experiences the world has never seen before like chef Heston Blumenthal whom I consider as one of the most eminent sensual innovators in the culinary field.

Chef Heston has crafted the most sensually innovative culinary experience where each sense has been considered with unparalleled rigour. He believes that eating is a truly multi-senso ~ Lebo Grand

One eye of the photographer looks wide open through the viewfinder, the other, the closed looks into his own soul. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

When someone insults you, even murder is forgivable? I see. What you told me is very important. You insulted that innocent old man's life. So I changed one of your guns into a banana. You should savor your last meal as best you can. ~ Hirohiko Araki

Photography is not purely a mechanical process. You need to know how to look, where to point the camera, and when to press the button. These acts depend on the eye, mind, and heart. ~ Andy Karr

Being a celebrity you always get really good seats to sporting events but you never get as good seats as the photographers get. And I really love sports. So one of the scams I have going now is I want to learn sports photography so I can get better seats at a sporting event. ~ Drew Carey

A work can do many things at once, and it doesn't have to be just about the world, it could also be about photography, it could be about perception, it could be an exploration of the medium. It could be a document, it could be a visual poetry, and it could be a formal exploration all at the same time. ~ Stephen Shore

Abstraction in photography is ridiculous, and is only an imitation of painting. We stopped imitating painters a hundred years ago, so to imitate them in this day and age is laughable. ~ Berenice Abbott

It's possible to think of photography as an act of editing, a matter of where you put your rectangle pull it out or take it away. Sometimes people ask me about films, cameras and development times in order to find out how to do landscape photography. The first thing I do in landscape photography is go out there and talk to the land - form a relationship, ask permission, it's not about going out there like some paparazzi with a Leica and snapping a few pictures, before running off to print them. ~ Michael Kenna

I don't have anything to say in any picture. My only interest in photography is to see what something looks like as a photograph. I have no preconceptions. ~ Garry Winogrand

Later, when she sees the photographs for the first time, she will be surprised at how calm her face looks - how steady her gaze, how erect her posture. In the picture her eyes will be slightly closed, and there will be a shadow on her neck. The shawl will be draped around her shoulders, and her hands will rest in her lap. In this deceptive photograph, she will look a young woman who is not at all disturbed or embarrassed, but instead appears to be rather serious. And she wonders if, in its ability to deceive, photography is not unlike the sea, which may offer a benign surface to the observe even as it conceals depths and current below. ~ Anita Shreve

The precision of hisskill places his work beyond the tentative and the experimental stage. He is continually searching and exploring both himself and his surroundings. and in this exploration of the realm of places, people and things, contrasts and relationships, Callahan is no respecter of conventional technical formula or code. His delicate sense of pattern is an integral part of his photography and not a thing by itself. ~ Edward Steichen

The aesthetic discussion of photography is dominated by the concept of time. Photographs appear as devices stopping time and preserving fragments of the past, like flies in amber. ~ Peter Wollen

There are no bad pictures; that's just how your face looks sometimes. ~ Abraham Lincoln

Remember that even just watching animals has an impact. Intrusion into their living space can expose them to predation, keep them from feeding or other essential activities, or cause them to leave their young exposed to predation or the elements. No photo or viewing opportunity is worth harassing or stressing wildlife. In appreciating and watching them, we have a responsibility to protect and preserve the animals that share our state. ~ Mary Taylor Young

Pictures you have taken have an influence on those that you are going to make. That's life! ~ John Sexton

To be a photographer, one must photograph. No amount of book learning, no checklist of seminars attended, can substitute for the simple act of making pictures. ~ Harry Callahan

A mysterious intersection of chance and attention that goes well beyond the existential surrealism of the 'decisive moment'. ~ Lee Friedlander