Quote

A picture should be looked at - not talked about.

Elliott Erwitt

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Elliott Erwitt
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: July 26
Film Director
Journalist
Photographer
Photojournalist
Paris
France
André S. Solidor
Elio Romano Ervitz
Andre S. Solidor
Elliot Erwitt
Talked
Photographer
Picture
Photography
Looked

More quotes by Elliott Erwitt

Image
Photography is a craft. Anyone can learn a craft with normal intelligence and application. To take it beyond the craft is something else. That's when magic comes in. And I don't know that there's any explanation for that.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
As a professional photographer I take photographs for other people to see - but I want them to see what I see. So I never assume that only a few people will appreciate what I do. At all times, the public should be able to understand what I've done, even if they don't understand how I've done it.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
I wasn't imposing my presence on anyone, which is very important for a would- be journalist. I stayed back. Always let people be themselves.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
I like museums in Berlin a lot, especially in the eastern part. They're extraordinarily good.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
It's about time we started to take photography seriously and treat it as a hobby.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
I don't like explosions. I don't mind progress. But digital photography has made every man, woman, child and chimpanzee a photographer of sorts and consequently has numbed down the general quality of photographs.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
There's no great mystique to photography. A lot of photographers like to put their hands up to their forehead and tell you how they've suffered and so forth. Well, I just rent a car and drive to the place and take the pictures.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
I'm almost violent about that stuff - electronic manipulation of pictures. I think it's an abomination. I reject it all. I mean, it's OK for selling corn flakes or automobiles or for taking pimples out of Elizabeth Taylor's face, but it undermines the thing that photography is about, which is about observation and not about manipulation of images.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
I see no difference between my pictures that people consider amusing and the rest. To me, it's all serious work - they're just a reaction to what I see. I don't leave this apartment in the morning and say to myself 'Today I'm going to be funny and tomorrow I'm going to be sad.'
Elliott Erwitt
Image
Do what the client wants, not what you want.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
Balance of light is the problem, not the amount. Balance between shadows and highlights determines where the emphasis goes in the picture...make sure the major light in a picture falls at right angles to the camera.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
The thing is that when you don't carry a camera, that's when you see pictures in particular, or at least that's when you think you see pictures in particular. When you do carry it, if you do see one on the occasion that you do, you can take it.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
In those simpler days, you could just take pictures of movie stars and show them the way they were, as normal human beings. And if I felt part of any movement at the time, it was just to do that - to be journalistic and photograph what is, rather than what is made up.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
Be sure to take the lens cap off before photographing.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
I'm an amateur photographer, apart from being a professional one, and I think maybe my amateur pictures are the better ones.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
You can find pictures anywhere. It's simply a matter of noticing things and organizing them.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
I enjoy nothing more than spending time with my loved ones, young and old, and at least once a year we get together for a formal family photograph.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
I've been around so long, most editors think I'm dead.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
Working myself into a position of total versatility, so that I can do anything I want to do at the time I want to do it. Whether I do it or not is another question.
Elliott Erwitt
Image
It's just seeing - at least the photography I care about. You either see or you don't see. The rest is academic. Anyone can learn how to develop. It's how you organize what you see into a picture.
Elliott Erwitt