Edward Steichen Quotes

Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.

When I first became interested in photography, I thought it was the whole cheese. My idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don't give a hoot in hell about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself.

Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product.

When that shutter clicks, anything else that can be done afterward is not worth consideration.

The boy and girl going hand in hand through a meadow; the mother washing her baby; the sweet simple things in life. We have almost lost track of them. On the one side, we over-intellectualize everything; on the other hand, we are over-mechanized. We can understand the danger of the atomic bomb, but the danger of our misunderstanding the meaning of life is much more serious.

Once you really commence to see things, then you really commence to feel things.

The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each to himself. And that is the most complicated thing on earth.

The use of the term art medium is, to say the least, misleading, for it is the artist that creates a work of art not the medium. It is the artist in photography that gives form to content by a distillation of ideas, thought, experience, insight and understanding.

No photographer is as good as the simplest camera.