Top 34 Quotes & Sayings by Harry Callahan
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American photographer Harry Callahan.
Last updated on April 20, 2025.
I wish more people felt that photography was an adventure the same as life itself and felt that their individual feelings were worth expressing. To me, that makes photography more exciting.
Experience is the best teacher of all. And for that, there are no guarantees that one will become an artist. Only the journey matters.
A picture is like a prayer; you're offering a prayer to get something, and in a sense it's like a gift of God because you have practically no control-at least I don't.
Only the journey matters.
Photography is an adventure just as life is an adventure. If man wishes to express himself photographically, he must understand, surely to a certain extent, his relationship to life.
I like the simple things. I don't know why. I'm that way. I came from a simple place.
You only do exercises in art school. That's not the real thing. A little bit tells you so much. You have to find your own self. And you don't know what you are! But that's what you have to search for.
My project could be only to photograph as I felt and desired, to regulate a pleasant form of living, to get up in the morning-free, to feel the trees, the grass, the water, sky or buildings, people-everything that affects us; and to photograph that which I saw and have always felt.
To be a photographer, one must photograph. No amount of book learning, no checklist of seminars attended, can substitute for the simple act of making pictures.
The mystery isn't in the technique, it's in each of us.
Photography is an adventure just as life is an adventure.
If you choose your subject selectively - intuitively - the camera can write poetry.
In terms of art, the only real answer that I know of is to do it. If you don't do it, you don't know what might happen.
I think nearly every artist continually wants to reach the edge of nothingness - the point where you can’t go any further.
I love art because it doesn't have rules like baseball. The only rule is to be good. That's the toughest thing to do.
I can't say what makes a picture. I can't say. It's mysterious.
It's a question of methods. Everybody wants results, but nobody wants to do what they have to do to get them done.
I just don't know what makes a picture, really - the thing that makes it is something unique, as far as I can understand. Just like one guy can write a sentence and it's beautiful and another one can write it and it's dead. What the difference is, I don't know.
I think I came alive when I started photography.
Nothing wrong with people getting shot, as long as it's the right people getting shot.
I can tell you for me it goes on forever. There are some things you can't ever find out. You can't find out in one life either.
A man has to know his limitations.
It's the subject matter that counts. I'm interested in revealing the subject in a new way to intensify it. A photo is able to capture a moment that people can't always see.
Every time I talked about making a picture I didn't do it. I had already done it - talking about it! I quit talking.
It takes me a long time to change. I don't think you can just go out and figure out a bunch of visual ideas and photograph. The change happens in living and not through thinking.
Opinions are like assholes, everbody's got one.
You're a legend in your own mind.
A picture is like a prayer.
I realize that we all do express ourselves, but those who express that which is always being done are those whose thinking is almost in every way in accord with everyone else. Expression on this basis has become dull to those who wish to think for themselves.
I guess I've shot about 40,000 negatives and of these I have about 800 pictures I like.
The photographs that excite me are photographs that say something in a new manner; not for the sake of being different but ones that are different because the individual is different and the individual expresses himself.
The difference between the casual impression and the intensified image is about as great as that separating the average business letter from a poem. If you choose your subject selectively—intuitively—the camera can write poetry.
I photograph continuously, often without a good idea or strong feelings. During this time the photos are nearly all poor, but I believe they develop my seeing and help later on in other photos. I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.
I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.
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