Photojournalists Quotes

Photojournalist? With a few exceptions, those of us working as photojournalists might now more appropriately call ourselves illustrators. For, unlike real reporters, whose job it is to document what's going down, most of us go out in the world expecting to give form to the magazine, or to newspaper editor's ideas, using what's become over the years a pretty standardized visual language. So we search for what is instantly recognizable, supportive of the text, easiest to digest, or most marketable - more mundane realities be damned. ~ Eugene Richards

If you want to be a photographer, particularly a photojournalist , you want to learn about the world. You want to learn about yourself. And you want to find things that you genuinely care about, because that will be the source of your greatest work. ~ Ed Kashi

To be a photojournalist takes experience, skill, endurance, energy, salesmanship, organization, wheedling, climbing, gatecrashing, etc. - plus an eye and patience. ~ Ruth Orkin

I've rarely seen portrayals of photojournalists that seem accurate. ~ Lynsey Addario

As an emerging photojournalist in the early 70s, my focus was on trying to create stories for magazines to the exclusion of almost everything else. I wish someone had told me then that the most personally important pictures you'll ever make are those about you and your life. I'm glad I had the chance to work for some great magazines, but I really miss those little everyday images, the ones that take place in and around your own life, which will never make the news. Don't sell yourself short: photograph your own life, not just everyone else's. ~ David

Truth-telling may be an ethic, adopted by photojournalists as a behavior, but experience shows us that it is not embedded in the medium like silver salts in film. ~ Andy Grundberg

As photojournalists, we supply information to a world that is overwhelmed with preoccupations and full of people who need the company of images ... We pass judgement on what we see, and this involves an enormous responsibility. ~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

The pictures are there, and you just take them. ~ Robert Capa

Photography can be a powerful instrument for change, and photojournalists can tell stories that make a difference. ~ Brian Skerry

We're all photojournalists now. It's no longer enough just to write. ~ David Cronenberg

I don't want you to understand the details. To feel how it feels, you just have to be on the ground with the people. That's where photojournalists have a lot of magic. ~ Shaul Schwarz

Among photojournalists there is still a sense that doing a photomontage is far graver than adding a filter. I am against this type of hierarchy that demonizes some options over others, demonizes them in respect to, what - ideology or moral code? ~ Joan Fontcuberta

You are not just a photojournalist, you're a historian. ~ Bill Eppridge