Imogen Cunningham Quotes

"I don't love the world. I think Jupiter should have hit us."

"I never stopped photographing. There were a couple of years when I didn't have a darkroom, but that didn't stop me from photographing."

"I told the students that whatever they did in class was for the wastebasket."

"I became kind of a drop-out in science after I came back to America. I wanted to photograph."

"Oh, you ask me, what is the greatest torture of a person who does portraits for a living? I could fill several volumes with nice nasty stories. I don't know."

"I'd never kill myself for a man. I wouldn't do it for anybody."

"When you do portraits professionally it's not a desire, it's for money."

"I turn people into human beings by not making them into gods."

"I was poor. When you're poor you work, and when you're rich you expect somebody to hand it to you. So I think being reasonably poor is very good for people."

"A woman said to me when she first sat down, You're photographing the wrong side of my face. I said, Oh, is there one?"

"I was invited to photograph Hollywood. They asked me what I would like to photograph. I said, Ugly men."

"I was brought up on art. My father thought I had a great hand at art and sent me to art school. But he did not want me to become a photographer."

"Well, I turn people into human beings by not making them into gods."

"I don't talk about success. I don't know what it is. Wait until I'm dead."

"I don't think there's any such thing as teaching people photography, other than influencing them a little. People have to be their own learners. They have to have a certain talent."

"Everybody who does anything for the public can be criticized. There's always someone who doesn't like it."

"There are certain things you don't discuss with Ansel, especially if you don't agree."

"My mind is vacant on names, but I know him as well as anything. When I need names they drop out of my head; when I don't need them they drop back."

"Get it out of your historic head."

"I don't know what love means."

"It's silly to keep people alive who have a terrible disease."

"I hate big models."

"I don't resent anything."

"I think San Francisco is the best place in the whole world for an easy life."

"When People magazine called me, I did the job on Ansel. I'm older than Ansel and he has to mind me."

"When people ask me silly questions about my private life, I just say, I don't discuss that."

"Some people say to me, Isn't it too bad that people discovered you so late? I never thought that."

"You see, I became kind of a drop-out in science after I came back to America."

"When I need names they drop out of my head; when I don't need them they drop back."

"Anybody is influenced by where and how he lives."