Berenice Abbott Quotes

Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.

Photography doesn't teach you to express your emotions; it teaches you how to see.

Photography helps people to see.

Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.

Let us first say what photography is not. A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. It is not just a pretty picture, not an exercise in contortionist techniques and sheer print quality. It is or should be a significant document, a penetrating statement, which can be described in a very simple term-selectivity.

There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.

Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.

I am so fascinated with this century it will help keep me alive. I'll be there until the last minute, fighting.

Pictures are wasted unless the motive power which impelled you to action is strong and stirring.

I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else. Excitement about the subject is the voltage which pushes me over the mountain of drudgery necessary to produce the final photograph.