A Quote by Eve Arnold

The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.

Eve Arnold

Quote Topics

Camera Instrument Photographer

Quote Author

Eve Arnold
American - Photographer
April 21, 1912 - January 4, 2012

If the photographer is interested in the people in front of his lens, and if he is compassionate, it's already a lot. The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.

Eve Arnold

If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.

Eve Arnold

It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.

Eve Arnold

This is how you can tell a real photographer: mostly, a real photographer does not say 'I wish I had my camera on me right now'. Instead a real photographer pulls out her camera and takes the photograph.

Neil Gaiman

What some highbrows call rapport is nothing more than a mild flirtation between photographer and the girl on the other side of the camera. Some models get so professional they can send hours flirting with the camera itself while the poor photographer is reduced to the role of spectator.

Sam Haskins

The two ideas are antithetical. Insofar as photography is (or should be) about the world, the photographer counts for little, but insofar as it is the instrument of intrepid, questioning subjectivity, the photographer is all.

Susan Sontag

When the photographer is nearby, I like to say, 'Quick, get a photo of me looking into the camera,' because I'm never looking into the camera. Christopher Nolan looks into the camera, but I think most directors don't, so whenever you see a picture of a director looking at the camera, it's fake.

Nicholas Stoller

When I first asked to take pictures of women at their homes, I was using my formal camera and I struggled to get the shots because I was still very much in the role of the photographer. Then the next time I had this little digital camera and their response to me would be completely different - I was a friend and I got new kinds of pictures. I was always treading a line between photographer and friend.

Olivia Arthur

I didn't want to be a woman photographer. That would limit me. I wanted to be a photographer who was a woman, with all the world open to my camera.

Eve Arnold

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

Dorothea Lange

A photographer's main instrument is his eyes. Strange as it may seem, many photographers choose to use the eyes of another photographer, past or present, instead of their own. Those photographers are blind.

Manuel Alvarez Bravo

You know, the Chinese don't like to be photographed because they believe that a part of their life is being taken away by the photographer. And in a way, they're right. The photographer is trying to get the prettiest moment of a life in his camera.

Bert Stern

The camera is not the instrument. People are always the instrument.

George Stevens

You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

Dorothea Lange

The difference between an amateur and a professional photographer is that the amateur thinks the camera does the work. And they treat the camera with a certain amount of reverence. It is all about the kind of lens you choose, the kind of film stock you use… exactly the sort of perfection of the camera. Whereas, the professional the real professional – treats the camera with unutterable disdain. They pick up the camera and sling it aside. Because they know it’s the eye and the brain that count, not the mechanism that gets between them and the subject that counts.