The way we relate to photography is changing. After a decade or so of everyone carrying a capable camera in their pocket, there’s a growing pull towards more intentional ways of taking pictures: think film photography, Polaroids and physical photo albums you can actually flip through. This ‘friction’ is part of the appeal. A photo you have to wait a week to see means something different to one that lives forgotten in a phone gallery.
Whether you’re a committed 35mm film devotee, a digital photographer or simply someone who wants to be more intentional about capturing the world around them, spring feels like a beautiful moment to pick up a camera. Here are nine quotes to send you out the door with one.
1.“A good photograph is knowing where to stand.” Ansel Adams
2.“Never take a picture of anything you are not passionately interested in.” Lisette Model
3.“The great geniuses are those who have kept their childlike spirit and have added to it breadth of vision and experience.” Alfred Stieglitz
Georgia O’Keeffe—Hand and Wheel by Alfred Stieglitz, 1933. Photo source: Wikimedia Commons
4.“A photograph is a secret about a secret. The more it tells you the less you know.” Diane Arbus
5.“Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.” Berenice Abbott
6.“The illiterate of the future will be the person ignorant of the use of the camera as well as the pen.” Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
Lucia Moholy by László Moholy-Nagy, 1924-28. Photo source: Wikimedia Commons
7.“If you are out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you’re not out there, you’ll only hear about it.” Jay Maisel
8.“I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.” Garry Winogrand
9.“Sharpness is a bourgeois concept.” Henri Cartier Bresson
