The Street Is a Theatre, Admission Free
A selection of my street photographs and some great photographers’ quotes
“A good photograph is knowing where to stand.” — Ansel Adams
“If 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
“The photograph is completely abstracted from life, yet it looks like life. That is what has always excited me about photography.” — Richard Kalvar
“To me, photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place. I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.” — Elliott Erwitt
“Why is it that the best poetry comes out of the most ordinary circumstances? You don’t have to have extreme beauty to write beautifully. You don’t have to have grand subject matter. I don’t need the Parthenon. This little dinky bungalow is my Parthenon. It has scale; it has color; it has presence; it is real” — Joel Meyerowitz
“I’m not trying to work with grandeur. I’m trying to work with ordinariness. I’m trying to find what spirits me away. Ordinary things. What did I say when I drove by those bungalows; something about the lives lived in them?” — Joel Meyerowitz
”Which of my photographs is my favourite? The one I’m going to take tomorrow.” — Imogen Cunningham
“A photograph is not created by a photographer. What they do is just open a little window and capture it. The world then writes itself on the film. The act of the photographer is closer to reading than it is to writing. They are the readers of the world.” — Ferdinando Scianna.
“The unconscious obsession we photographers have is that wherever we go we want to find the theme we carry inside ourselves.” — Graciela Iturbide.
“The 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
“Photography is the only language that can be understood anywhere in the world.” — Bruno Barbey.
“Taking pictures is like fishing or writing. It’s getting out of the unknown that which resists and refuses to come to light” — Jean Gaumy.
