10 Fascinating Quotes on Photography & Love

Photograph/Akshay Samarth

“But before all else, a work of art is the creation of love. Love for the subject first and for the medium second…. Love is the general criterion by which the rare photograph is judged. It must contain it to be not less than the best of which the photographer is capable.”

– Eliot Porter

 “When I teach a class I often give the assignment: “Photograph someone you love.” I ask people to do this so they have a subject about whom they have feelings, a subject that is more than a model, or an object, or a shape, or an idea. In this way, they can judge the result not only by its technical success, but also by how well it describes their feelings.”

– John Loengard

“I am not saying it’s easy, nobody said it was going to be easy, but that’s just half the joyride. The part of the adventure is the non-conclusiveness of what we do. Because once you get it all right, that’s when the adventure is over.

It’s a little like love, isn’t it, when you fall in love for the first time and then keep falling, every single day, for a different reason altogether.”

– Prabuddha Dasgupta

 “Photographers are always photographing reality but they never question the nature of the thing itself. I’m not interested in what things look like; I’m much more interested in what things feel like. It’s like reading a hundred love stories or falling in love; I’d much rather fall in love.”

– Duane Michals

Photograph/Kashish Parpiani

 

 

“My advice to young photographers?

Get a good pair of walking shoes…

… and fall in love.”

– Abbas

“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. It is important to see what is invisible to others—perhaps the look of hope or the look of sadness. Also it is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph.”

– Robert Frank

“All my photographs are about meetings and about coups de foudre—love at first sight. To do that type of photography, one must wipe the canvas clean to prepare for chance encounters, be open and aware to such moments, otherwise it becomes a cliché—already seen and expected.”

– Edouard Boubat

Photograph/Gertrude Käsebier

“Let me here call attention to one of the most universally popular mistakes that have to do with photography—that of classing supposedly excellent work as professional, and using the term amateur to convey the idea of immature productions and to excuse atrociously poor photographs. As a matter of fact nearly all the greatest work is being, and has always been done, by those who are following photography for the love of it, and not merely for financial reasons. As the name implies, an amateur is one who works for love; and viewed in this light the incorrectness of the popular classification is readily apparent.”

– Alfred Stieglitz

“I still dream of the day when I will take a photograph so beautiful that it can be called love.”

– Jan Saudek

“… a fact about photography: we can look at people’s faces in photographs with an intensity and intimacy that in life we normally only reserve for extreme emotional states—for a first look at someone we may sleep with, or a last look at someone we love.”

– Adam Gopnik

Not a quote. But a really funny advertisement for the Canon 40D