Top 202 Photographer Quotes

The horrible thing is, as a model, it wasn’t that unusual to be in a weird situation where a photographer or someone feels they have a right to your body.

I met a Shanghai photographer who finds these old streets and matches the French names to what they are today. I was able to find my grandfather’s block, and just walking the same streets and finding his house was deeply moving. I finally felt connected to China.

What is right? Simply put, it is any assignment in which the photographer has a significant spiritual stake… spiritually driven work constitutes the core of a photographer’s contribution to culture.

Over the years, my work became both my vocation and avocation. Since I enjoyed it so much, I never felt a great need to go outside for relaxation. Nevertheless, I became an avid photographer and traveler. Possibly my love for travel stems from the early years when my family seldom went away on vacation.

I was born in the Bay Area because my dad was a semi-professional photographer and poet who was really into John Coltrane. He’s had many lives. My dad’s a capitalist to his bone, but he’s also a human to his bone.

Digital photography makes you a better photographer.

The Narrator of ‘A Sport and a Pastime’ is an American photographer living in a borrowed house in what he calls ‘the real France,’ Autun, a small town where he hopes to take some career-changing photographs in the spirit of Atget.

The most important thing you learn as a sports photographer is anticipation – not where the action is taking place, but where it’s going to take place. Not where the subject is now, but where they’re going to be.

Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.

I am a professional photographer because it is the best way I know to earn the money I require to take care of my wife and children.

It sounds really cheesy, but I’ve just really been so focused on making sure that I am nice to everyone that I work with and making the effort to get to know the people on set, whether it’s the catering crew or the famous photographer.

The photographer, even in fashion and portraiture, has to have a standpoint. It’s important to know what you stand for, no? Most people just take pictures, but they stand for nothing. They follow trends and don’t know why.

Not long ago, every time I did a picture shoot for a magazine, the photographer would ask me to show up wearing jeans and cowboy boots. They seemed to think I was a hillbilly. Now it’s different. Now they’re not quite sure what to make of me. And I show up wearing whatever I want.

Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer it is my task to reveal it if I can.

I’ve done a lot of commercial work. I’m the complete photographer.

There’s a kind of telepathy that goes on with the photographer and model.

In America, the photographer is not simply the person who records the past, but the one who invents it.

When you’re in a relationship with a photographer, and they start abusing that relationship and being like, ‘I want you to do this, and I want you to do that,’ it makes you go, ‘No.’ I didn’t want to work all the time.

I can get obsessed by anything if I look at it long enough. That’s the curse of being a photographer.

I’m not a politician or a scholar or political historian. I’m just a photographer who’s trying to capture a spirit. It’s not an intellectual process; it’s an intuitive process.

Truthfully, I don’t really think of myself as a photographer. I don’t have all the disciplines and knowledge of a person who’s spent their life devoted to photography.

I sell my first book to Random House, a memoir of my years as a war photographer, for twice my NBC salary.

I have no regrets about my work. To be a photographer was a gift of the gods. I can’t imagine anything that would have been better.

I was known as a 35-mm photographer with a view-camera mentality.

The reason I call myself a documentary photographer is the idea of how photographs contain and participate in history.

A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes.

As a photographer, God’s light in Southern California is something unlike I’ve ever seen on planet Earth. There’s a beauty about it, especially in the afternoon that is so pretty.

If I had sat around and waited until I had an idea to be a successful photographer, I would still be in finance.

As a photographer, there are times when I have to decide if it’s appropriate to invade a moment with my camera.

In the same way that musicians inspire me, artists and photographers like David LaChapelle influence me with their visuals. A photographer like LaChapelle creates an entirely new and unique visual for their work, and that’s what I’d like to do with the Charli XCX world as well.

Being called a dance photographer makes me bristle. You might say that dance is my landscape. The root of my interest is movement or, rather, how movement can be interpreted photographically, and dance provides a perfect opportunity for this.

A good photographer can make you look incredible, even when you’re not feeling very sexy.

Sometimes they are a matter of luck; the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates.

Anybody can be a great photographer if they zoom in enough on what they love.

I really had a great time shooting for Dabboo Ratnani. He is such an experienced photographer and works in perfection.

Did you notice what happened when digital photography arrived? Suddenly there were four times as many people on set for a shoot! It used to be a photographer, a couple of photo assistants, stylist and a fashion assistant, hair and make-up and that was about it.

I started as a news photographer at the University Of Texas’ Daily Texan.

I used to be a photographer – and now I’m some kind of digital photographic artist.

Well, I liked it – that was the main thing. I liked it, but I didn’t think of it in terms of a career. I didn’t really know; I didn’t really think about it. One thing just led to another until finally I quit my job as a salesman and found myself working as a photographer.

I had a background in theater as an actor, and then a photographer, and then as an experimental filmmaker and editor.

I worked with a great photographer called Rafael Pavarotti a while ago and he’s got some amazing playlists on Spotify.

Think both big and small. Loving to bake doesn’t only mean becoming a baker. It could mean starting a blog, becoming a food photographer, or going into organic chemistry.

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a screenplay writer or a photographer. First question people asked me: ‘Who do you know? Any contacts?’

Instagram is great but I’m not an amazing photographer and I don’t wanna post selfies constantly.

My first modeling job in Paris, the photographer said, ‘Tue es belle,’ which means, ‘you are pretty,’ and I thought he said, ‘Tu es poubelle,’ which means, ‘you are the trash can.’ I burst into tears. He was not happy about that.

My dad had been an ardent amateur photographer, and he taught me to compose a photograph from the back to the front, and then populate the picture.

A girl must have an indefinable magic, real character, a strong sense of self. Her role is to respond to the brief of a photographer or communicate the vision of a designer – while making whatever she does look utterly effortless and whatever she wears utterly seamless.

We at Interscope put projects out with anyone we believe has a great idea and is a true talent, whether it’s a musician, photographer, software developer, or technology innovator.

I’m not a good photographer, not a good writer. I’m a pretty regular person whose insecurity is so pervasive that it makes me always feel vulnerable.

I’d very much like to create my own style as a photographer, even if it’s just for myself.

Many people misunderstand me – I’m quite happy to be called a photographer. All of a sudden, the art world has caught up with photography, and they are trying to hijack us.

I became a photographer in order to be a war photographer, and a photographer involved in what I thought were critical social issues. From the very beginning this was my goal.

By default, I am a travel photographer. I work on a combination of commissions and personal projects that take me around the world.

Because of reality television and all these celebrities thinking they can be designers, everyone imagines that they can just become a designer, photographer, or model, but that’s not the way things work. People have to go to school, learn their craft, and build a brand – that’s the right, healthy way to do things.

I am a hobbyist photographer so I relate to the visual arts that way, but I’m not a painter.

My family was very unhappy about my becoming a photographer – profoundly and deeply unhappy.

The thing that makes writing so difficult is you don’t have the element of serendipity. At least with a photograph, you can set up the camera, and something might happen. You might be a lousy photographer, but you can get a good picture if you just take enough of them.

I had a neighbour who was a photographer, and he’d always say, ‘I am going to shoot you’ and I would always cry.

I used to live in a hostel with Bihari roommates. They used to be very excited about getting their pictures clicked, and since there weren’t any mobile phones back then, they used to have a photographer accompany them everywhere. Thus, my character’s personality and the photographer were incorporated into ‘Dabangg.’

I’ve been a photographer all these years… I haven’t been in my own darkroom for 10 years.

I liked the idea of being a photographer, just that you take this one picture of this one thing that’ll never happen again – it’s a bit weird when you think about it.

My mother had taken me to photographer Paul Hesse, who used some of my pictures on magazine covers.

Had I not become a singer, I may have been a photographer.

My dad’s an amazing photographer, and he loves a Sunday market. So the house was full of all the stuff he’d buy, and frame.

I found it very helpful not to do the venture round. Instead, I started with very little money, a few thousand dollars, and I did every job myself. I was the first photographer. I was the first customer service rep. I was the first online marketing person.

As a young girl, being a chef did not cross my mind – I wanted to conquer the world. I wanted to play with my brother and the boys. I wanted to be a famous photographer.

My dad was a photographer, so we had all these studio portraits of us.

Me and my friends had BMX magazines and skate magazines, and I was a photographer who made skate videos.

We had to pose with towels wrapped around us, holding rubber rings, that sort of thing. The turning point came when a photographer asked us to get on a fur rug and crawl like cats. We said no, because it was sexist and disrespectful.

You know, my dad wasn’t a photographer or filmmaker by profession, but on Sundays, he would take pictures of me and my family or his pals horseback riding, and it was a means of communication and affection, a means of not being so dysfunctional with each other.

For me N.M.E. was a very big thing. When I first came to the United Kingdom I started taking pictures for them and I became their main photographer for five years, and that’s really been the basis of everything I’ve been doing since.

I understood that synergistic dance between photographer and object – ‘muse,’ if you will, ‘model,’ whatever you call us. It’s that silent language of communication, like being psychic with each other.

You do your work as a photographer and everything becomes past. Words are more like thoughts; the photographer’s picture is always surrounded by a kind of romantic glamor – no matter what you do, and how you twist it.

Originally, I thought of being a photographer and nearly went to art school, but I got a record deal instead.

I’ve been a documentary photographer for much longer than I have been a filmmaker.

Whatever it takes to get the image to reach that level is what that photographer needs to do. And for me, I just have such a love of the tactile and sensuous quality of a black and white silver gelatin print.

I posed as an album-cover designer and photographer… That I today have some album covers and photographs to show for myself is a monument to the attention-to-detail of my disguise.

And only the photographer himself knows the effect he wants. He should know by instinct, grounded in experience, what subjects are enhanced by hard or soft, light or dark treatment.

I’m not a photographer, so I didn’t get into F-stops or ND filters or background, foreground, cross-light, all that stuff. But I was interested in the camera and the lenses. That’s the world that I’m moving in, in terms of acting and giving a performance.

I think that I was lucky that I was 30 when I did ‘Love Story’, which came with this extravagant pop celebrity. I had already done 15 years of what I call ‘real’ work.’ I was a waitress, chambermaid, and a photographer’s assistant, so I knew that I was tremendously lucky as a novice actor to have that big hit.

I started modeling at 14. It’s simple. You respond to what the photographer wants and wear other people’s ideas. I got bored with it, though, so I went to university.

It is a peculiar part of the good photographer’s adventure to know where luck is most likely to lie in the stream, to hook it, and to bring it in without unfair play and without too much subduing it.

If you have a cool personality, the photographer will want to work with you because he or she will have more fun on set.

I am someone who takes pleasure in exploring the full scale of the medium photography. I am a photographer.

People think: ‘If this photographer’s looking like a big jerk-off, maybe it’s okay if I do.’ I like to catch my subjects off balance a bit.

Sometimes when I’m being photographed, I hear the voice of this photographer who told me when I was about six while he was taking my school photo that I didn’t have a nice smile, and I shouldn’t smile in photos.

It’s very difficult to get any footage of yourself doing what you love unless you have a friend who’s a photographer or videographer and wants to document you. That was really the idea and the goal from the beginning: to help people get a good photo, and then it was to help people get a good video.

When you put an individual on the cover of a big picture magazine, like ‘Life of Look’, their career skyrocketed. As a photographer, you were very empowered; people came to you, bowing to you and what you represented.

Many people send me letters in England saying, ‘I want to be a war photographer,’ and I say, go out into the community that you live in. There’s wars going on out there; you don’t have to go halfway around the world on an airplane where there are bombs and shells. There are social wars that are worthwhile.

I’m a photographer, period. I love photography, the immediacy of it. I like the craft, the idea of saying ‘I’m a photographer.’

I guess that’s what I was: a set of abs. And they lit the abs and shot the abs and sent the abs on their way. The photographer didn’t look at my face once. I was humiliated.

I was the official wedding photographer at one of my best friends’ weddings. Fortunately she was one of the most easygoing brides ever, so she made it easy for me.

I like a shoot when I feel strong and sexy, a little hard, with a darker edge. That’s what I do best. I like giving a photographer what they want, working with the art director. And modeling is all I’ve ever known.

I’m a street photographer, but I’m interested in any ironic, whimsical images, and there’s something very romantic about a circus.

I don’t think I’ll ever be comfortable posing for a photographer; I was never trained.

I’m still learning and I’m still growing as a photographer.

A photographer must be prepared to catch and hold on to those elements which give distinction to the subject or lend it atmosphere.

You have to keep in mind that fashion is constantly changing and every runway show, every designer and every photographer – they are going to have a different vision in mind.

By the time I met Julia Child, her husband, Paul, was little more than a ghost of a man, so diminished by old age and its attendant diseases that it was impossible to discern the remarkable artist, photographer and poet he once had been.

A number of years ago, I found a book of photography by Weegee; he was a crime photographer in the 1930s in New York. He was the first person to put a police scanner in a car and drive around.

I’m not very daring in my street style, usually because there’s a photographer around!

Technically, I have not changed very much. Ask my assistants. They’ll tell you, I am the easiest photographer to work with. I don’t have heavy equipment. I work out of one bag.

I’m a documentary photographer. That’s what I’ve always wanted to be; that’s where my heart and soul is.

I am an artist first and a photographer second.

I am a tender, beautiful and loving guy that happens to slap a photographer now and then because they get in my way.

I didn’t decide to be a photographer; I just happened to fall into it.

When people ask how have I kept on top, I have to say with the help of every photographer, make-up artist and hairdresser I’ve ever worked with.

All I know is for a number of years, if someone like me called police for a burglary, a mugging, or something happened to me, chances are that a photographer or reporter would turn up before a policeman.

I realized I didn’t want to be a photographer. I gave it up, but I still worked that job in the restaurant and I found myself constantly hanging out in the kitchen.

My mom is a painter and photographer and my grandfather was an artist, so I’ve always been surrounded by creative people.

It’s funny: I was a photographer before I was a programmer.

As a photographer, I don’t really have a view of the world in general. Someone taking pictures for ‘National Geographic’ might. Each of us works to our full capacity when we’re in the midst of a shoot. Each of us finds our own level of intensity, and that’s the fun of it.

I know it will blow minds, but I plan on finding an apartment in New York. I’ll commute to Ottawa, so I can still be Pierre Trudeau’s wife and the mother of our three children – but I also want to be a working photographer.

I’m married to Kevin, a photographer whose career has put him on the campaign trail with presidential candidates and sent him on assignment to far-flung places for long periods of time. It was sometimes rough when our children were small, and I was beginning to write in earnest.

I feel as if I’ve been fairly successful with maintaining a cohesive tone between the work I make as a photographer and as a director.

Brodsky was born in May, 1940, a year before the German invasion. His mother worked as an accountant; his father was a photographer and worked for the Navy Museum in Leningrad when Brodsky was young. They were doting parents and much beloved by Iosif Brodsky, who was their only child.

My mother was a famous photographer for actresses, including Sophia Loren, Gina Lollobrigida, and so many. I remember I went to school close to my mother’s studio, and for years, I went to the studio after school and just watched how she captured these beauties.

I don’t paint. I am a hobbyist photographer, so I relate to the visual arts that way, but I’m not a painter.

In high school, my mom’s friend was a location scout, and there was a shoot at our house. I came home from school, and the photographer said, ‘You should call my friend at this agency.’

Without social media, I’d probably just be a quirky, amateur photographer with a hard drive full of photos. I’d be cold calling respected publications, begging for a feature.

I wish I were a really good photographer.

Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?

I enjoy modeling. I feel that acting is more fulfilling for me, and you definitely have a lot more to contribute as an actress than you do as a model, but that being said, when I shoot with a really incredible photographer, it’s exciting and inspiring.

Over the years, I have worked professionally as a musician, photographer, and writer. I’ve been able to earn my living in other ways, but I always knew I’d come back to acting.

People often say, ‘You don’t go to fashion shows? What kind of photographer are you? What the hell is the wrong with you, man?’ But that’s what I need in order to be who I am.

I believe every photographer is influenced by their sexual preference in a greater or lesser way, and it certainly has affected me.

My father was a photographer at the National Bureau of Standards. A self-educated man, he never finished high school, but in his career at the National Bureau of Standards, he made many useful inventions and eventually became chief of the Photographic Technology Section.

I continue to be a photographer; I have enjoyed fishing and hunting with a close friend; and have owned two ranches, first in northern California and then in the state of Washington.

I didn’t know a single female photographer who covered conflict who even had a boyfriend, much less a husband or a baby.

I’ll always be an amateur photographer.

I used to want to be a war photographer, and I used to want to be a ballerina and a comedian. I used to want to be a writer. I invalidated myself; it’s a mistake for me.

I was discovered by a photographer. I literally was in the right place at the right time.

I remember being told by my very first photographer that if I lost weight, and I was a skinny model, it would do wonders for my career. My mum got really defensive – ‘I don’t think we will be doing that, thank you so much, goodbye.’

My job as a portrait photographer is to seduce, amuse and entertain.

I went on tour with the Rolling Stones in 1972 for two or three cities. And in 1975, I was the tour photographer for the Rolling Stones. I hung onto my camera for dear life. Because it scared the hell out of me.

When I went to Jamia, I thought I wanted to be a cinematographer or photographer because I liked telling stories in pictures, but my teachers explained that if you want to tell your own stories then that is what a director does.

No surfer wants to be the photographer, especially when the waves are good.

I’m a writer. An amateur photographer. An actor.

One day, a photographer living in our building came up to my mom and asked her if I would like to model. After a few days, I was offered a Kannada film, ‘Chiru,’ which was a lot of fun. But I had to complete my studies, so I went back to college.

As a journalist and longtime photographer, I love Instagram and the connection it gives me to my friends and family as I journey afar or for me to view their lives from my perch back home.

No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen.

I was there less than a year before I was assigned to the Paris bureau. I spent two years there and, in fact, before I even went on the staff I was sent to Europe to do assignments which they wouldn’t normally do for a young photographer just starting out.

There is no part of me that wants to have to pull the blinds down when I’m talking to my wife about dinner because some photographer is in a bush outside.

I collect art. I just recently bought two gorgeous photographs of Marilyn Monroe by international photographer Eve Arnold and I know it sounds horrible but when she dies all her pictures are going to be worth triple. But I won’t tell you how much I got them for – let’s just say it was a lot.

Photographer James Nachtwey has spent his professional life in the places people most want to avoid: war zones and refugee camps, the city flattened by an earthquake, the village swallowed by a flood, the farm hollowed out by famine.

My skin’s not a normal sight. When a photographer says, ‘I don’t know what it is, but that’s just not it…’ I know. They like the different colours of my skin. They’re not getting them with a particular outfit.

Obviously I am a photographer and I believe in my medium: I do think that powerful photographs can force change. It doesn’t take long to look and be engaged in a strong image whereas, with a story, you have to actually sit down and pause and be involved in it.

Making children cry for a photographer can be considered mean. But I would say that making children laugh and show off their jeans for an apparel ad is just as exploitative and less natural. Toddlers’ natural state, like, 30 percent of the time, is crying, and it doesn’t indicate pain or suffering.

For a photographer, sharks are a stirring subject, possessing a perfect blend of grace and power. They have been sculpted by evolution and are ideally suited for whichever ecosystem they inhabit, from coral reefs to the open ocean.

If you’re a photographer, you end up being the raw creative force that allows other people to see what kind of narrative you want to be giving or what kind of art that you want people to see.

My closest friends are Roger Moore, who is an actor, Sean Connery, who is an actor, Terry O’Neill, who is a photographer, Johnny Gold, who was the boss of Tramp, and Leslie Bricusse, who is a composer.

A completely disrespectful photographer was asked to stop taking photographs, and then said, ‘I’ve got what I want. What are you going to do about it?’ How would you feel if somebody walked up and started taking your photograph? I don’t think you’d be very happy.

Then I thought I was going to be a photographer. I tried a hand at darkroom technician. I played in a band. It took me quite some time to discover that I wanted to write.

When the British-Malaysian photographer Ian Teh first worked in China, more than a decade ago, he rendered it as a nation of people in Technicolor.

I wanted life to be episodic. I wanted to be a magazine photographer and I was willing to do what it took to become that.

It is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country.

The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer.

I’ve only done one shoot where it’s modeling clothes, not like me in my environment. And the stylist, literally, I had her stand behind the photographer and do poses.

One of the biggest mistakes a photographer can make is to look at the real world and cling to the vain hope that next time his film will somehow bear a closer resemblance to it.

My first big job was an Abercrombie &Fitch campaign. But my mom wouldn’t let me skip school for it, so I missed half of the shoot. When we got there, we realized Bruce Weber was the photographer; we knew we had made a mistake!

To me, that is the essence of me as a photographer. It is those ideas, working with them, formulating them and eventually putting them down on paper, photographing them and then going on to the next step.

I myself was a wedding photographer when I was, like, 16.

My mom’s an artist in every way. She’s a painter, a photographer. She’s a wanderer – always searching, always seeing. I guess you could say my mom gave me her eyes.

I really don’t have any secrets. I’ve never met a photographer whose work I respected that had a secret because the secret lies within each and every one of us.

I was the Playmate editor for ‘Playboy’ for two years. I produced two years’ worth of centerfolds. I did everything on that, from picking the girls to designing the sets to picking the wardrobe, coming up with themes, assigning the photographer, down to editing the photos and approving the retouching.

I look at ordinary objects, and I see things that other people don’t see. That’s why I’m a photographer.

In the late Fifties and early Sixties, I used to think that most of these fashion creators weren’t that great, and if the photograph was good, it was mostly thanks to the photographer.

I was a photographer. That’s how I began my career, behind the camera.

I consider it essential that the photographer should do his own printing and enlarging. The final effect of the finished print depends so much on these operations.

I’m a portrait photographer that’s used to shooting celebrities, and I usually need time and all kinds of lights and a studio to set up my shots.

I love it when a photographer lets me create my own movement and feeling to the images. By that I mean he doesn’t restrict me in his or her own ideas but rather gives me a direction and lets me work within those boundaries freely.

I’m very lucky that I’m not a photographer for hire – people hire me for me. I go into every commercial work with an art focus, with that lens; every brand I’ve worked for just lets me do whatever I want to do. I have full creative freedom.

I have been frequently accused of deliberately twisting subject matter to my point of view. Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference. Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism. But criticism can come out of love.

The painter constructs, the photographer discloses.

My uncle was a photographer for ‘The Irish Times.’

I started out on photography accidentally. A policeman came to a stop at the end of my street, and a guy knifed him at the end of my street. That’s how I became a photographer. I photographed the gangs that I went to school with.

A journalist is supposed to present an unbiased portrait of an event, a view devoid of intimate emotions. This is impossible, of course. The framing of an image, by its very composition, represents a choice. The photographer chooses what to show and what to exclude.

The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer.

In England, I’m already labeled a rock photographer, which is a little insulting, because I’m not a rock photographer at all.

I don’t think at that time I realized how important it was and how important it was for me to be here and carry on that legacy in our family of being a photographer.

I’m just like a photographer or a director. Of course I have an opinion, but I don’t think my opinion, or what I want to say… is so obvious ’cause that’s not my job. My job is just to give a point of view, not more than that.

The fashion industry certainly has its obscene sides. The cost of a coat can be obscene. So can the cost of a photo shoot if you’re working with a really good photographer.

French ‘Vogue’ was always a photographer’s magazine.

In my final year of college, I was interning with L’Oreal, when during one of the photo shoots, a photographer suggested I become a model. I was working under Smira Bakshi, who was this really cool chick, as she was loaded, had her fun, and was successful. I basically aspired to be her.

Everybody is a film critic today, just like everybody who has a DSLR or a mobile phone is a photographer today. But, a saturation point will come some day.

As an avid photographer, I also took advantage of the latest technology in photography – digital photography – to post photos on my website on a daily basis.

I was always introduced as the Beatles photographer and I gave it up in the end. I was so unsure of myself. Am I good or am I just the Beatles photographer? People were not interested in what I did before. I could not stand it any more.

When you’re modeling you’re actually acting for the camera and the photographer. It’s more fun, too because there are no lines to memorize.

I dream that someday the step between my mind and my finger will no longer be needed. And that simply by blinking my eyes, I shall make pictures. Then, I think, I shall really have become a photographer.

My mum was very interested in art and liked to write, and my dad was a hobbyist photographer.

I don’t like gimmicky pictures; I’ve always hated them. I like pictures that are very clear and clean, whether you’re a great street photographer – somebody like Friedlander or Winogrand or Cartier-Bresson – or whether you’re a portraitist, like Irving Penn.

My mom was a medical photographer, but on the side, she did a before-and-after glam photography business in the house. She would do makeup and hair – and I was her assistant.

The first things I did was I was a writer, painter, and photographer, and we grew up very poor, so even though I could get into any college I wanted, there was no way to pay for it.

If I hadn’t become a photographer, I would have loved to become a doctor. I would have loved to have done something that actually helped people and changed their lives.

I’ve always had a healthy disregard for authority – it allows me to do my job as a portrait photographer and not as someone who is playing the power game.

For a short time I was an assistant to a professional photographer, and I felt that my soul was not there. That is the stage when I decided to stay in London and do a graduate degree.

My friend Danny Clinch, who’s a photographer, gave me a big, signed, numbered print of a photo he took of Eddie Vedder in Seattle. It’s hung in my writing room where I have posters of writers that inspire me. They’re all pointing at me. Tom Waits is like, ‘Don’t sell out!’

In my 20 years as a photographer, covering conflicts from Bosnia to Gaza to Iraq to Afghanistan, injured civilians and soldiers have passed through my life many times.

I never set out to be a photographer.

A photographer must choose a palette as painters choose theirs.

I got a camera when I was nine years old and it wasn’t until I was a model that I realized you could be a photographer for a job.

Edward Curtis was a photographer in the late 19th century who tried to document the rapidly disappearing Native Americans. He assembled a canon of work which, today, is exemplary and invaluable.