Photographer Quotes

"War is the greatest failure of mankind."

"Your belief system saturates the space around you."

"I wanted to be a painter, somewhere between Abstract Expressionism and Pop."

"War is death. If we are to engage in war, then we should have to stare it straight in the face and call it by its rightful name."

"I'm not sure how to describe my style. A lot of my work is dark and looks a bit sad, which is strange because I'm such a smiley, over-the-top positive guy who wears gold shoes most days."

"Make your work deeper and better than those before you, and eventually someone will notice. If you don't think the work is better than what you've seen, then go back until it is."

"A visual understanding of great composition and how to use a camera and expensive lenses can be learned, but drive and a real hunger for making photos and telling stories... I don't think that part can be learned. You either have that inside, or you don't."

"Men are separated by so many petty things."

"I want to tell you what it was really like to think death is imminent, but I can't. It's a taste in your mouth. And an emptiness."

"I don't want to do stories that don't have a heart. I'm just not going to be satisfied with stories where I can't be passionate about the subject, where I can't make a difference."

"The mindset that I have on every project I take on is, 'How do I make this interesting enough for me to want to stop and look at it?' So in that regard, what I do behind the camera, whether it's still or motion picture, is the same."

"I like to mix pieces in my art direction from the '60s or the '40s and the '90s and present-day stuff. To me, that feels very real. When I go into people's houses, it's not all today."

"If I do a certain number of ads, I have to do a personal project in between, just for my own sanity. I still consider myself a punk-rock kid."

"With the work that I do as a director, I've got dialogue, camera movement, and character blocking to help create a tone to the piece. In photography, those elements are somewhat void so that tone becomes a bit more subtle but still equally important."

"I feel as if I've been fairly successful with maintaining a cohesive tone between the work I make as a photographer and as a director."

"I don't want to do the nerdy, goofy guy again. That was really fitting for the 'Napoleon' world, but that's kind of where I want it to stay."

"Being an actor really, really strengthens me as a director. There's just a certain type of understanding that comes from having been there and knowing how much is really being asked of actors that helps me."

"Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever... it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything."

"We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there. We have been conditioned to expect... but, as photographers, we must learn to relax our beliefs."

"I may be wrong, but the essential illustrative nature of most documentary photography, and the worship of the object per se, in our best nature photography, is not enough to satisfy the man of today, compounded as he is of Christ, Freud, and Marx."

"Almost inevitably there are tensions in the picture, tensions between the outside world and the inside world. For me, a successful picture resolves these tensions without eliminating them."

"In any art, you don't know in advance what you want to say - it's revealed to you as you say it. That's the difference between art and illustration."

"I've often noticed that we are not able to look at what we have in front of us, unless it's inside a frame."

"In the total darkness, poetry is still there, and it is there for you."

"I would say that no film is apolitical. There are politics in all films. Any film that is anchored in a society, any film that deals with humanity is necessarily political."

"I feel like a tree. A tree doesn't feel a duty to start doing something about the earth from which it comes. A tree just has to bear fruit, and leaves and blossoms. It doesn't feel grateful to the earth."

"The calling of art is to extract us from our daily reality, to bring us to a hidden truth that's difficult to access - to a level that's not material but spiritual."

"In order to be universal, you have to be rooted in your own culture."

"Religion works on some people but not on everyone, because it says, 'Stop thinking and accept what I tell you.' That's not valid for people who want to think and reflect."

"I really think that I don't mind people sleeping during my films, because I know that some very good films might prepare you for sleeping or falling asleep or snoozing. It's not to be taken badly at all. This is something I really mean."