A photographer’s best work is, alas, generally done for himself.

What’s happening is that people are making a billion photographs a year of their cats, frequently with the cats wearing costumes. Do you think I should be doing shows of cat photography?

Speaking of photography Baudelaire said: “This industry, by invading the territories of art, has become art’s most mortal enemy.” And in his own terms of reference Baudelaire was half right; certainly the new medium could not satisfy old standards. The photographer must find new ways to make his meaning clear.

Photography is the easiest thing in the world if one is willing to accept pictures that are flaccid, limp, bland, banal, indiscriminately informative, and pointless. But if one insists in a photograph that is both complex and vigorous it is almost impossible.

It isn’t what a picture is of, it is what it is about.

Luck is the attentive photographer’s best teacher.

The basic material of photographs is not intrinsically beautiful. It’s not like ivory or tapestry or bronze or oil on canvas. You’re not supposed to look at the thing, you’re supposed to look through it. It’s a window.

Most of Tina Modotti’s work that is known to the photography world was done in Mexico in the years 1923 through 1926, when she lived and worked with Edward Weston.

Photography is a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. The contest can be held anywhere...

Photography’s central sense of purpose and aesthetic: the precise and lucid description of significant fact.