Black And White Photography Quotes

In fact, I probably learned more about photography from studying black-and-white photography in those magazines [Look Magazine and LIFE Magazine] than I did from watching movies here. That's the truth.

One teacher told me that my work belonged in the trash. That day I ran out of the classroom and ended up in the library, where there happened to be a black and white photography exhibition of Robert Rauschenberg's photographs of the streets of New York. The subject of his photos were exactly what I was painting about.

I just get the will to do it.  I don’t plan a photograph in advance…  I work by impulse.  No philosophy.  No ideas.  Not by the head but by the eyes.  Eventually inspiration comes-instinct is the same as inspiration, and eventually it comes.

Life wanted faces that would express what we wanted to tell. Not just the unusual or striking face, but the face that would speak out the message from the printed page. I am always looking for some typical person or face that will tie the picture essay together in a human way.

...one sees differently with color photography than black-and-white... in short, visualization must be modified by the specific nature of the equipment and materials being used.

A lot of photographers think that if they buy a better camera they'll be able to take better photographs. A better camera won't do a thing for you if you don't have anything in your head or in your heart.

Dodging and burning are steps to take care of mistakes God made in establishing tonal relationships.

Which is probably the reason why I work exclusively in black and white... to highlight that contrast.

To some extent, the cult surrounding black-and-white photography is based on nostalgia.

My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.

In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.

My philosophy, like color television, is all there in black and white.

Black and white photography is truly quite a 'departure from reality', and the transition from one aspect of visual magic to another was not as complete as many imagine.

If I knew how to take a good photograph, I'd do it every time.

Light is meaningful only in relation to darkness, and truth presupposes error. It is these mingled opposites which people our life, which make it pungent, intoxicating. We only exist in terms of this conflict, in the zone where black and white clash.

It is an illusion that photos are made with the camera... they are made with the eye, heart and head.

The eye should learn to listen before it looks.

Things are not quite so simple always as black and white.

When you photograph people in color you photograph their clothes. When you photograph people in black and white, you photograph their soul!

I am inspired by great food, theater, books, the beach, black-and-white photography, and great vocalists, like Dianne Reeves, Alice Smith, and Shirley Horn. I am inspired by my mentor Diana Castle, who is guiding me towards a truth and honesty in my life and work that I have always longed for.

Be yourself. I much prefer seeing something, even it is clumsy, that doesn't look like somebody else's work.

Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness.

Black-and-white photography, which I was doing in the very early days, was essentially called art photography and usually consisted of landscapes by people like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. But photographs by people like Adams didn't interest me.

You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.

Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow.

The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don't have to explain things with words.

Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.

In the beginning it was all black and white.