It is not sociologists who provide insights but photographers of our sort who are observers at the very center of their times. I have always felt strongly that this was the photographer's true vocation.

Beauty is not the purpose of creation, it is its reward. Its appearance, often late in the day, is no more than an indication that the disrupted equilibrium between man and nature has once again been restored by art. Submitted to this test, what remains of contemporary works of art?

Photography in our time leaves us with a grave responsibility. While we are playing in our studios with broken flowerpots, oranges, nude studies and still lifes, one day we know that we will be brought to account: life is passing before our eyes without our ever having seen a thing.

In the absence of a subject with which you are passionately involved, and without the excitement that drives you to grasp it and exhaust it, you may take some beautiful pictures, but not a photographic oeuvre.

I think education and intelligence (are) important, but not art. Not artistic education.

A poor photographer meets chance one out of a hundred times and a good photographer meets chance all the time.

The wall, safe haven for what is forbidden, gives a voice to all those who would, without it, be condemned to silence

If you take your inspiration from nature, you don't invent anything, because what you want to do is to interpret something. But still, everything passes throught your imagination. What you produce at the end is very different from the reality you started with.

My ambition was always to show aspects of daily life as if we were seeing them for the first time.

To keep from going stale you must forget your professional outlook and rediscover the virginal eye of the amateur.

I don't invent anything. I imagine everything... most of the time, I have drawn my images from the daily life around me. I think that it is by capturing reality in the humblest, most sincere, most everyday way I can, that I can penetrate to the extraordinary.

André Kertész has two qualities that are essential for a great photographer: an insatiable curiosity about the world, about people, and about life, and a precise sense of form.

To me photography must suggest, not insist or explain.