Leica Quotes

If you would just listen to me . . . if you would just look at the pictures I took - "
"We've seen them, Miss Maxwell. Several times already. Frankly, nothing you've said tonight checks out - not your statement, and not these grainy, unreadable images from your cell phone."
"I'm sorry if the quality is lacking," Gabrielle replied, acidly. "The next time I'm witnessing a blood slaughter by a gang of psychos, I'll have to remember to bring my Leica and a few extra lenses. ~ Lara Adrian

Photography is nothing-it's life that interests me. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

There were days, rainy gray days, when the streets of Brooklyn were worthy of a photograph, every window the lens of a Leica, the view grainy and immoble. We gathered our colored pencils and sheets of paper and drew like wild, feral children into the night, until, exhausted, we fell into bed. We lay in each other's arms, still awkward but happy, exchanging breathless kisses into sleep. ~ Patti Smith

I don't really have a favorite camera. I use a Leica and Canon a lot. It depends, especially professionally, on the requirements. But my carry-around camera is a Leica. ~ Elliott Erwitt

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. ~ Eve Arnold

Leica are known for their still camera lenses and in the last year and a half have come out with a series of film lenses and they are brilliant. The best thing about them, apart from their quality, which is uniform, is that each one is the same size, pretty much the same weight ... So in terms of fitting into the rig, everything is almost purpose built for that and the quality is beautiful, really beautiful. ~ Michael Seresin

I shoot with a few different camera's. A Sony A6000 with several lenses and a Lumix LX100 with a beautiful Leica lens. I like to travel light so I can have it with me most of the time. I really try and document all the places we travel to. ~ Eliot Lewis

While we're working, we must be conscious of what we're doing. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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

For me in my twenties, working in Hollywood was confusing in that the differences between what was fiction and what was nonfiction seemed to blur in my mind. Everything became a visual memory for me. I carried my Leica camera, giving opportunity to take pictures from my view. ~ John Van Hamersveld

The sign at the entrance to my gym locker room says, no cell phones please, cell phones are cameras. They are not. A camera is a Nikon or a Leica or Rolleiflex, and when you strike someone with one, they know they have been hit with something substantial. ~ Danny Lyon

The thing itself is never just out there in the world waiting to be framed by the photographer's Leica; rather, it is something dynamically produced in the act of representation and reception and already subject to the grids of meaning imposed on it by culture, history, language, and so forth. ~ Abigail Solomon-Godeau

If you can shoot well, all you need is a disposable, toy camera or a camera phone to create great work. If you're not talented, it doesn't matter if you buy a Nikon D3X or Leica; your work will still be uninspired. ~ Ken Rockwell

Photographers should make three or four prints from one negative and then crop them differently. When I was art director at Harper's Bazaar and at several agencies as a consultant, young photographers would bring me their portfolios and all the prints would be in the same standard proportions, either for the Leica or the Rolleiflex. Many times, by limiting themselves in this way, they missed the true potentialities of their photographs. ~ Alexey Brodovitch

We must avoid however, snapping away, shooting quickly and without thought, overloading ourselves with unnecessary images that clutter our memory and diminish the clarity of the whole. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson