After creating two videos featuring only vintage black and white photos, I have been noodling about the magic of those images. Why do monochrome photos resonate with me—and so many others—more than most color ones?
My noodling led me to curate a collection of photos and quotes by and of some of the greatest artists and photographers of all time.
"Light is the photographic medium par excellence; it is to the photographer what words are to the writer; color and paint to the painter; wood, metal, stone, or clay to the sculptor."
Andreas Feininger
Be daring,
Be different,
Be impractical,
Be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
Cecil Beaton"People are under the illusion that it's easy... Technically, it is complex. You have a million options with equipment to distract you. I tell my students to simplify their equipment."
Brett Weston"It is through the power of images that, in time, real revolutions may well be brought about."
André Breton"The best photos, the ones that are remembered, are the ones that have first passed through the person’s mind before being restored by the camera."
Robert Doisneau"A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words."
Ansel Adams"War is hell. You can't photograph a flying bullet, but you can capture genuine fear."
Horst Faas"If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it’s as though I’ve neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up."
Richard Avedon"When I called the editor at Sports Illustrated, he thought I was crazy for taking pictures of a boxer in a swimming pool. So I called Life magazine, and they liked the idea..."
Flip Schulke
"I was a compulsive shooter back then. I was very shy, and it was a lot easier for me to communicate if I had a camera between me and other people."
Dennis Hopper"Photography can be a mirror and reflect life as it is, but I also think that perhaps it is possible to walk, like Alice, though a looking-glass, and find another kind of world with the camera."
Tony Ray-Jones"What we need in photography is more sincerity, more respect for our medium and less respect for its decayed conventions."
Alvin Langdon Coburn"A true portrait should, today and a hundred years from today, be the testimony of how this person looked and what kind of human being he was."
Philippe Halsman"The objectivity of the camera, used wrongly, is the very devil."
Minor White"I have seized the light – I have arrested its flight!"
Louis Daguerre“In my view you cannot claim to have seen something until you have photographed it.”
Émile Zola"Objectivity is of the very essence of photography, its contribution and at the same time its limitation."
Paul Strand
"No photographer is as good as the simplest camera."
Edward Steichen"If I have any message worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no shortcuts in photography."
Edward Weston“I don’t pay attention to celebrities. I don’t photograph them. They don’t dress so… interestingly. They have stylists. I prefer real women who have their own taste."
Bill Cunningham"The whole character of the sitter is to be read at first sight; the whole likeness, as it shall appear when finished, is to be seen at first, in each and all its details, and in their unity and combinations."
Albert Sands Southworth"The more pictures you see, the better you are as a photographer."
Robert Mapplethorpe"Composition in a photograph is often the product of a photographer’s visual sensitivity and talent. Good composition is the product of inherent talent, judiciously exercised and of untiring efforts to achieve satisfactory results."
Victor Hasselblad"A better camera won't do a thing for you if you don’t have anything in your head or in your heart."
Arnold Newman"All photography is pop, and all photographers are crazy..."
Andy Warhol"The camera should be like the notebook of a trained reporter, to record events as they happen, without trying to stop them to make a picture."
Stefan Lorant
"A good photograph is knowing where to stand."
Ansel Adams"The only thing we photographers really want more than life, more than sex, more than anything, is to be invisible."
Philip Jones Griffiths"I do not claim to have perfected an art but to have commenced one, the limits of which it is not possible at present exactly to ascertain."
William Henry Fox Talbot"When you talk about photographic portraits — really good ones — there is no such thing as a 'lucky shot.' A good portrait is preconceived; it is premeditated; it is planned."
Pirie MacDonald"Nothing proves the truth of surrealism so much as photography."
Salvador Dalí"The goal for the photographer is to be visually articulate."
Dennis Stock"Don’t be afraid. Just go ahead — photograph, photograph, photograph. That’s the only way you’ll learn."
Alfred Stieglitz"Look and think before opening the shutter. The heart and mind are the true lens of the camera."
Yousuf Karsh"Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others... Photography has no rules. It is not a sport."
Bill Brandt"People will never understand the patience a photographer requires to make a great photograph, all they see is the end result."
Alfred Eisenstaedt"Photograph and be photographed."
Alexander Rodchenko"What the camera had to do was expose the evils of racism, the evils of poverty, the discrimination and the bigotry, by showing the people who suffered most under it."
Gordon Parks
"Some photographers think that by taking pictures of human misery, they are addressing a serious problem. I do not think that misery is more profound than happiness."
Saul Leiter"The enemy of photography is the convention, the fixed rules of 'how to do'. The salvation of photography comes from the experiment."
László Moholy-Nagy"The magic of photography is metaphysical. What you see in the photograph isn’t what you saw at the time. The real skill of photography is organised visual lying."
Terence Donovan"Is photography an art? There is no point in trying to find out if it is an art. Art is old-fashioned. We need something else."
Man Ray"The camera is not only an extension of the eye, but of the brain. It can see sharper, farther, nearer, slower, faster than the eye. It can see by invisible light. It can see in the past, present, and future."
"Ultimately, photography is subversive not when it frightens, repels or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks."
Roland Barthes"Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected."
Robert Frank"I went into photography because it seemed like the perfect vehicle for commenting on the madness of today’s existence."
Robert Mapplethorpe"The secret of photography is the camera takes on the character and personality of the handler."
Walker Evans"I believe that the more technicalities you let creep into photography, the more you drive out the creativity."
Jack Manning"The photographer is like the cod, which lays a million eggs in order that one may be hatched."
George Bernard Shaw"Any photographer who says he’s not a voyeur is either stupid or a liar."
Helmut Newton"Photography is space, light, texture, of course, but the really important element is time—that nanosecond when the image organizes itself on the ground glass."
Ezra Stoller"Photography allows me to wander with a purpose."
Leonard Freed"You don’t have to pose your camera. The pictures are there, and you just take them."
Robert Capa"Photography cannot idealise, but should be nature apprehended in its most intellectual phase,"
Alexander BassanoA photographer’s main instrument is his eyes. Strange as it may seem, many photographers choose to use the eyes of another photographer, past or present, instead of their own. Those photographers are blind."
Manuel Álvarez Bravo"In black and white you suggest, in color you state."
Paul Outerbridge
"I didn’t write the rules. Why would I follow them?"
W. Eugene Smith"Pressing the button for LIFE just made the world stand still."
J.R. Eyerman"Had I posed that shot, I would, of course, have ruined it. I’d have picked fewer men..."
Joe Rosenthal"I can get obsessed by anything if I look at it long enough. That’s the curse of being a photographer."
Irving Penn"If a day goes by without my doing something related to photography, it's as though I've neglected something essential to my existence, as though I had forgotten to wake up."
Richard Avedon"In my view you cannot claim to have seen something until you have photographed it."
Émile Zola"Seeing is not enough; you have to feel what you photograph."
André Kertész"If it makes you laugh, if it makes you cry, if it rips out your heart, that's a good picture."
Eddie Adams"Everything around us, dead or alive, in the eyes of a crazy photographer mysteriously takes on many variations, so that a seemingly dead object comes to life through light or by its surroundings. To capture some of this I suppose that's lyricism"
Josef Sudek"Forget the camera, forget the lens, forget all of that. With any four dollar camera you can capture the best picture."
Alberto Korda"Chance is always there. We all use it. The difference is a poor photographer meets chance one out of a hundred times and a good photographer meets chance all the time."
Brassaï"I always had the feeling that something was going to happen in front of me, and when it did I wanted my camera to be there."
Carl Mydans
"I will be remembered when I’m in heaven. People won’t remember my name, but they will know the photographer who did that picture of that nurse being kissed by the sailor at the end of World War II. Everybody remembers that."
Alfred Eisenstaedt“The tremendous development of the camera in recent years has been remarkable. Now almost anyone can take pictures, and most of them are doing it. But it is rather like giving a 6-year-old a pistol."
Arnold Genthe"Thinking should be done before and after, not during photographing."
Henri Cartier-Bresson"The future of photography does not lie in the cheapness but in the quality of a picture."
Gustave Le Gray"You can take a good picture of anything. A bad one, too."
William Eggleston“And if it chance that a picture is beautiful, by what name shall we call it? Shall we say that it is not a work of art, because our vocabulary calls it a photograph?"
F. Holland Day"The work of a photojournalist who wants to be more than a mere craftsman, is a constant battle, a battle for the picture, and as in hunting, he gets his game only if he has an obsession for the chase."
Erich Salomon"I saw Ruth standing there with his uniform, No. 3 ... and knew that was the shot. It was a dull day, and most photographers were using flash bulbs, but I slowed the shutter and took the picture without a flash."
Nat Fein
"Remember – you’re as good as your last picture. One day you’re hero, the next day you’re a bum..."
Weegee"The camera is a mirror with a memory, but it cannot think."
Arnold Newman"Whoever controls the media—the images—controls the culture."
Allen Ginsberg"Its all so simple – no one believes me … you strike a pose, then you light it. Then you clown around and get some action in the expressions. Then, you shoot."
George Hurrell"Looking at photographs, like taking them, can be a joyful, sensuous pleasure. Looking at photographs of quality can only increase that pleasure.
Pete Turner"I do not sacrifice truth for the sake of technical quality… A photojournalist is something of an historian, and an historian must never lie."
Paul Almasy"You don’t have to pose your camera. The pictures are there, and you just take them."
Robert Capa"I drifted into photography like one drifts into prostitution. First I did it to please myself, then I did it to please my friends, and eventually I did it for the money."
Philippe Halsman"Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others... Photography has no rules. It is not a sport."
Bill Brandt"I'm the damned soul of my damned camera, and God, how it hates me sometimes."
George Platt Lynes
"A garbage can, occasionally, to me at least, can be beautiful. That’s because you’re seeing. Some people are able to see that—see it and feel it. I lean toward the enchantment, the visual power, of the esthetically rejected subject."
Walker Evans"Photography is demonstrably the most contemporary of art forms; it is the most vital, effective and universal means of communication of facts and ideas between peoples and nations."
Cornell Capa
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