Top 6 Quotes & Sayings by Deborah Turbeville

In these times aesthetic taste is dismissed as irrelevant. Well, I am perverse, for that reason I am more drawn to it than ever. I have been described as having style, of being a mannered photographer... it's some people's quarrel with my work and others' fascination.

I don't consider [my] photographs fashion photographs. The photographs were for fashion, but at the same time they had an ulterior motive, something more to do with the world in general.

In my pictures, you never know, that’s the mystery. It’s just a suggestion and you leave it to the audience to put what they want on it. It’s fashion in disguise.

A lot of times there were big mistakes, but I would show the art director and he'd say, Yeah, let's go with it. There would be a strange cropping or one girl in focus and three out or a blur. But I would end up liking the mistakes and incorporating them into my work. And I became known for it.

I destroy the image after I've made it, obliterate it a little so you never have it completely there.

I have an instinct for finding the odd location, the dismissed face, the eerie atmosphere, the oppressed mood.