Berenice Abbott

“I didn't decide to be a photographer; I just happened to fall into it.”

“Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.”

“There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.”

“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 challenge for me has first been to see things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a ball park.”

“To me, photography is a means of recording, a document. I’m a realist.”

“The world doesn't like independent women, why, I don't know, but I don't care.”

“A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. It is not just a pretty picture, not an exercise in contortionist techniques and sheer print quality. It is or should be a significant document, a penetrating statement, which can be described in a very simple term-selectivity.”

“The camera is the slave of the eye.”

“Photography helps people to see.”

“Does the cameraman point his camera at an object, or does the object irresistibly attract the camera?”

“I am a photographer, not an artist.”