Are You stuck in a rut and want to re-fuel Your inspiration, or are You simply interested in the mindset of some of most famous Street Photographers? Then this collection of Street Photography Quotes might inspire You to give Your best on the next photo walk.
Understanding The Street Photography Quotes
A lot of the popular Street Photography Quotes have lost their original meanings over time. They are often not meant to be taken literally, but also figuratively.
Let’s take the opening quote of Capa for example.
Of course, the primary meaning is to get closer to Your subjects. This is beneficial in Street Photography in many ways.
You are reducing the chaos in the frame, erasing unnecessary elements near the edges, by narrowing down the frame. It becomes easier to understand what the focus of the photograph is and therefore the story becomes more understandable.
The quotes are not inspirational, but sometimes educational when You think about them.
Not all of the Street Photography Quotes will be helpful for You. Focus on the ones that seem the most interesting to You and apply them in Your Street Photography or note them down.
The next time You feel a little uninspired or need some motivation, look at Your personal list of quotes to give You some extra push.
The Collection of Street Photography Quotes
1My photography is a reflection, which comes to life in action and leads to meditation. Spontaneity – the suspended moment – intervenes during action, in the viewfinder. – Abbas
2There are no bad pictures; that’s just how your face looks sometimes. – Abraham Lincoln
3I fell in love with taking pictures, with wandering around finding things. To me, it feels like a kind of performance. The picture is a document of that performance. – Alec Soth
4Anyone can shoot chaos. But the most perceptive photographers can make compelling pictures out of uninteresting moments. – Alex Tehrani
5I only know how to approach a place by walking. For what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk, and then watch and wait some more, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heat of the known awaits just around the corner. – Alex Webb
6It is more important to click with people than to click the shutter. – Alfred Eisenstaedt
7Photography is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality. – Alfred Stieglitz
8Photograph: a picture painted by the sun without instruction in art. – Ambrose Bierce
9Seeing is not enough; you have to feel what you photograph. – Andre Kertesz
10The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do. – Andy Warhol
11A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people. – Annie Leibovitz
12Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop. – Ansel Adams
13It’s not how a photographer looks at the world that is important. It’s their intimate relations up with it. – Antoine D’Agata
14A photograph can be an instant of life captured for eternity that will never cease looking back at you. – Brigitte Bardot
15Photography is the only language that can be understood anywhere in the world. – Bruno Barbey
16Allow yourself the freedom to step away from perfection because it is only then that you can find success. – Chase Jarvis
17The best dreams happen when you’re awake. – Cherie Gilderbloom
18Still images can be moving and moving images can be still. Both meet within soundscapes. – Chien Chi Chang
19When I use the camera, I often feel like I know part of the people or places I come in contact with. – Christophe Agou
20Emotion or feeling is really the only thing about pictures I find interesting. Beyond that is is just a trick. – Christopher Anderson
21Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it. – Confucius
22Photography has the capacity to provide images of man and his environment that are both works of art and moments in history. – Cornell Capa
23We are often taught to look for the beauty in all things, so in finding it, the layman asks the philosopher while the philosopher asks the photographer. – Criss Jami
24Better to write for yourself and have no public, than to write for the public and have no self. – Cyril Connolly
25Don’t shoot what it looks like. Shoot what it feels like. – David Alan Harvey
26I’ve finally figured out what’s wrong with photography. It’s a one-eyed man looking through a little ‘ole. Now, how much reality can there be in that? – David Hockney
27Taking pictures is like tiptoeing into the kitchen late at night and stealing Oreo cookies. – Diane Arbus
28I only use a camera like I use a toothbrush. It does the job. – Don McCullin
29The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. – Dorothea Lange
30All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the inability to notice. – Elliott Erwitt
31For me, pictures provide a means of holding, intensely, a moment of communication between one human and another. – Emment Gowin
32Best wide angle lens? Two steps backward. Look for the ‘ah ha’. – Ernst Haas
33A good snapshot keeps a moment from running away. – Eudora Welty
34If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument. – Eve Arnold
35I have always been very interested in photography. I have looked at far more photographs than I have paintings. Because their reality is stronger than reality itself. – Francis Bacon
36I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed. – Garry Winogrand
37Everything you’ve ever wanted is on the other side of fear. – George Addair
38A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity. – George Bernard Shaw
39Light makes photography. Embrace light. Admire it. Love it. But above all, know light. Know it for all you are worth, and you will know the key to photography. – George Eastman
40If you own an oven it does not make you a top chef. Likewise, if you own a camera, it does not make you a professional photographer. – Giles Christopher
41I don’t care so much anymore about ‘good photography’; I am gathering evidence for history. – Gilles Peress
42The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer. – Gordon Parks
43A photographer is an acrobat treading the high wire of chance, trying to capture shooting stars. – Guy Le Querrec
44I guess I’ve shot about 40,000 negatives and of these, I have about 800 pictures I like. – Harry Callahan
45Since I’m inarticulate, I express myself with images. – Helen Levitt
46Look, I’m not an intellectual, I just take pictures. – Helmut Newton
47Your first 10,000 photographs are your worst. – Henri Cartier-Bresson
48To take pictures had become a necessity and I did not want to forgo it for anything. – Inge Morath
49A good photograph is one that communicates a fact, touches the heart and leaves the viewer a changed person for having seen it. It is, in a word, effective. – Irving Penn
50If you are out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you’re not out there, you’ll only hear about it. – Jay Maisel
51If you seek authenticity for authenticity’s sake you are no longer authentic. – Jean Paul Sartre
52You fill up the frame with feelings, energy, discovery, and risk, and leave room enough for someone else to get in there. – Joel Meyerowitz
53What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time. – John Berger
54I have a very good memory, but it’s short. Thank god for photography. – John E. Burkowski
55Photography cannot do much. It provides some level of information, yet it has no pretensions about changing the world. – John Vink
56What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce. – Karl Lagerfeld
57Ultimately photography is about who you are. It’s the truth in relation to yourself. And seeking truth becomes a habit. – Leonard Freed
58Photography is my one recreation and I think it should be done well. – Lewis Carroll
59I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers. – Mahatma Gandhi
60In the same spirit, when the automobile arrived, there were those that declared the horse to be the most perfect form of locomotion. – Man Ray
61Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second. – Marc Riboud
62You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus. – Mark Twain
63With photography, I like to create fiction out of reality. I try and do this by taking society’s natural prejudice and giving this a twist. – Martin Parr
64Photograph the world as it is. Nothing’s more interesting than reality. – Mary Ellen Mark
65A decisive moment stops movement but also provokes thought. – Matt Black
66Buy a good pair of comfortable shoes, have a camera around your neck at all times, keep your elbows in, be patient, optimistic and don’t forget to smile. – Matt Stuart
67For me, photography has become a way of attempting to make sense of the strange world that I see around me. I don’t ever expect to achieve that understanding, but the fact that I am trying comforts me. – Mikhael Subotzky
68I’m always mentally photographing everything as practice. – Minor White
69Quit trying to find beautiful objects to photograph. Find the ordinary objects so you can transform it by photographing it. – Morley Baer
70Don’t wait. The time will never be just right. – Napoleon Hill
71The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. – Oscar Wilde
72In every photographer there was a painter, a true artist, awaiting expression. – Pablo Picasso
73It’s one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it’s another thing to make a portrait of who they are. – Paul Caponigro
74I want the viewers to be moved into the lives of the people that they are looking at, the visual experience is incredibly emotional. – Paul Fusco
75Skill in photography is acquired by practice and not by purchase. – Percy W. Harris
76A photograph has picked up a fact of life, and that fact will live forever. – Raghu Rai
77We are making photographs to understand what our lives mean to us. – Ralph Hattersley
78A photograph is a moment when you press the button, it will never come back. – Rene Burri
79Everything that is visible hides something that is invisible. – Renee Magritte
80The photograph is completely abstracted from life, yet it looks like life. That is what has always excited me about photography. – Richard Kalvar
81If your pictures aren’t good enough, you aren’t close enough. – Robert Capa
82When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice. – Robert Frank
83There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph. – Robert Heinecken
84When I have sex with someone I forget who I am. For a minute I even forget I’m human. It’s the same thing when I’m behind a camera. I forget I exist. – Robert Mapplethorpe
85Obsessed is just a word the lazy use to describe the dedicated. – Russell Warren
86I don’t believe a person has a style. What people have is a way of photographing what is inside them. What is there comes out. – Sebastiao Salgado
87As a photographer, this is what you are after: to bring the world something new, something incredible… Here is the new way to see the world. – Stephen Alvarez
88My life is shaped by the urgent need to wander and observe, and my camera is my passport. – Steve McCurry
89The camera is an excuse to be someplace you otherwise don’t belong. It gives me both a point of connection and a point of separation. – Susan Meiselas
90All photographs are memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time’s relentless melt. – Susan Sontag
91Photography is the beauty of life, captured. – Tara Chisholm
92Street Photography is like fishing. Catching the fish is more exciting than eating it… – Thomas Leuthard
93I am forever chasing light. Light turns the ordinary into the magical. – Trent Parke
94A photograph is the pause button on life. – Ty Holland
95Always seeing something, never seeing nothing, being photographer. – Walter De Mulder
96Photography, like alcohol, should only be allowed to those who can do without it. – Walter Sickert
97I think good dreaming is what leads to good photographs. – Wayne Miller
98Be yourself. I much prefer seeing something, even it is clumsy, that doesn’t look like somebody else’s work. – William Klein
99There is in fact something obscene and sinister about photography, a desire to imprison, to incorporate, a sexual intensity of pursuit. – William S. Burroughs
100The urge to create, the urge to photograph, comes in part from the deep desire to live with more integrity, to live more in peace with the world, and possibly to help others to do the same. – Wynn Bullock
