A Quote by Paul Strand

If the photographer is not a discoverer, then he is not an artist.

Paul Strand

Quote Topics

Artist Photographer Then

Quote Author

Paul Strand
American - Photographer
October 16, 1890 - March 31, 1976

A photographer is a photographer and an artist is an artist. I don't believe in labels or titles. Why should a painter or sculptor who has probably never challenged the rules be an artist just because his title and an art school education automatically make him one.

Peter Lindbergh

I'm in between an installation artist, video artist and photographer. And when you work with nude bodies, you're immediately called a pornographer or a fashion photographer.

Spencer Tunick

"Do not call yourself an "artist-photographer" and make "artist-painters" and "artist-sculptors" laugh; call yourself a photographer and wait for artists to call you brother."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

My teacher introduced me to this photographer Eugène Atget. He was a French photographer in the late 1800s up until 1927 in Paris. He didn't consider himself an artist, but he was probably one of the artists of the 20th century. This guy documented all of Paris during those years. It's unbelievable. The books are phenomenal. The Museum of Modern Art has all his stuff now and [American photographer] Berenice Abbott saved his work. Not very much is known about his life, but the work is unreal and it totally spoke to me. He was the only artist for a number of years that I cared about at all.

Jeff Vespa

As an artist, illustrator, and photographer, most of my daily work was formed around the Art & Entertainment business, which was about packaging ideas that looked like they were crafted as artist ideas. In the distributed products, my artist credit was hidden inside the package of the artist or entertainment personality.

John Van Hamersveld

Billions of photos are shot every year, and about the toughest thing a photographer can do is invent an original, deeply personal, instantly recognizable visual style. In the early nineties, Wolfgang Tillmans did just that, transforming himself into a new kind of artist-photographer of modern life.

Jerry Saltz

If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this.

James Whistler

I've never not been sure that I was a photographer any more than you would not be sure you were yourself. I was a photographer, or wanting to be a photographer, or beginning - but some phase of photographer I've always been.

Dorothea Lange

I guess you can be a supermodel today just by building followers. You don't necessarily have to do the work of going to Milan and then to Paris or New York, trying to find the right photographer, artist, or designer to see you.

Amber Valletta

Look, Matisse I ain't. You know how they have on the invitations, a reception for the artist will be held at... And I say, Look, you gotta change this. I'm not an artist. I'm a photographer, a skilled craftsman.

Phil Stern

I became a photographer in order to be a war photographer, and a photographer involved in what I thought were critical social issues. From the very beginning this was my goal.

James Nachtwey

Well, I'm not going to get into that. I think that those kind of distinctions and lists of titles like "street photographer" are so stupid. I'm a photographer, a still photographer. That's it.

Garry Winogrand

I don't think you have to earn your income as an artist to be an artist. But if you are an artist, then art is what you do, whether or not you're paid for doing it; it is what you do, not what you are. I regard artist not as a description of temperament but as a category of profession, of vocation.

Tony Kushner

I hate to say I'm a photographer, because I learned photography as I went along. But I also hate to say I'm a painter, a draftsman, even an artist. I think it's good when you're confused about what you are; it means you haven't defined yourself as an artist yet.