Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" For my first book, 'New York,' I had one camera and two lenses. It was fotografia povera. "

Related Quotes:

" My grandfather and his wife came to America at the end of the 19th century from Hungary. Everyone started out on the Lower East Side. They became embourgeoise and would move to the Upper West Side. Then, if they'd make money, they'd move to Park Avenue. Their kids would become artists and move down to the Lower East Side and the Village. "

" If I didn't have to earn a living somehow, I would never have taken a fashion photograph in my life. "

" As a kid, I wanted to be part of the Lost Generation who came to France. "

" I always thought I was going to be an artist. I used to draw, and I would read Russian novels until 3 or 4 in the morning. "

" Leger was not only the first artist I ever met but also the first pop artist, and he blew our minds. "

" If I look back, I think most of the things I did - the films, the books, the collaborations with these magazines - were mostly by accident. "

" I was 24 years old at the time. I had no real notion of what photography was about. I had no training. By accident, I put a negative in an enlarger, and you can do many things with that negative. "

" My complaint is that Americans drive me crazy, and the politics drive me crazy. "

" I was making a film on Muhammad Ali in 1964, and I went to Miami to film everything around the fight for the world championship with Sonny Liston. I had the good luck of flying down to Miami, and there was one empty seat, and the guy sitting next to this empty seat was Malcolm X. "

" I find it satisfying that what I've done in photography has had so much influence in how people take photographs and what they look at and how they look at things. "

" I was fascinated by the Black Panthers because I'd been in contact with the Nation of Islam, thanks to Muhammad Ali, and their way of talking was that the whites were the devil, and they'd get rid of them once they took over. "

" The English are very exotic to me. "

" I discovered that I could do whatever I wanted with a negative in a darkroom and an enlarger. "

" In the late Fifties and early Sixties, I used to think that most of these fashion creators weren't that great, and if the photograph was good, it was mostly thanks to the photographer. "

" I always dreamed of working in Paris, of going to the Coupole and slapping Picasso or Giacometti on the shoulder. "

" If a film is a real knockout like 'Raging Bull,' it does not matter that it might not have happened like that. "

" Memories. That's the thing about photography. I look at the contact sheet, and it brings back everything: whether I was tired, whether I was full of beans. "

" I had no real respect for good technique because I didn't know what it was. I was self-taught, so that stuff didn't matter to me. "

" I think it's obscene. I don't know how you support the monarchy. How can you do that? "

" I'm an outsider, I guess. "

" I saw New York differently after being in Paris for a few years. "

" I grew up in New York, in a rough neighborhood where our biggest concern was not getting beat up. I was always far from the center of the Big Apple. "

" What's very funny is when you see amateurs filming something, they do some things no professionals would dare to do. They instinctively do things that are very avant-garde and useful. "

" I thought it would be a good idea to look at New York with this half-European, half-native eye and really do something to get back at this city that I thought really gave me a hard time when I grew up. "

" My father was like Willy Loman, you know: he never really made it - and he was from a family where there were people who had made it. "

" I grew up in Manhattan. For Manhattanites, Brooklyn was the sticks, a second-rate civilization. My friends and I, we were so snobby. Living in the Bronx or Brooklyn was incredible... for me, that was like a foreign country. "

" I did a film on Muhammad Ali before he was champion. I was there when he became champion in 1964. I was happy to be able to document the development of a real American hero. "

" I'm known for fashion photographs, but fashion photographs were mostly a joke for me. In 'Vogue,' girls were playing at being duchesses, but they were actually from Flatbush, Brooklyn. They would play duchesses, and I would play Cecil Beaton. "

" I was a very clumsy Jewish kid. "

" I had an experience that was kind of backward. Instead of thinking that photography was a step down, it brought me a step up, to transpose and modify things. "