Andre Kertesz Quotes

Technique isn't important. Technique is in the blood. Events and mood are more important than good light and the happening is what is important

Everything is a subject. Every subject has a rhythm. To feel it is the raison detre. The photograph is a fixed moment of such a raison detre, which lives on in itself.

You do not have to imagine things; reality gives you all you need.

Of course a picture can lie, but only if you are not honest with yourself.

The most valuable things in a life are a man's memories. And they are priceless.

I am not a surrealist. I am only a realist. All this group - surrealists - use my name. No, no, I am realist.

Have confidence in the inventions and transformations of chance.

Two seconds are a thousand years.

The moment always dictates in my work. What I feel, I do. This is the most important thing for me. Everybody can look, but they don't necessarily see. I never calculate or consider; I see a situation and I know that it's right, even if I have to go back to get the proper lighting.

Photography is my only language.

I just walk around, observing the subject from various angles until the picture elements arrange themselves into a composition that pleases my eye.

I still regard myself as an amateur today and I hope that's what I'll stay until the end of my life. Because I'm forever a beginner who discovers the world again and again.

My talent lies in the fact that I cannot touch a camera without expressing myself.

I can do something with almost anything I see. Everything is still interesting to me.

I do not document anything, I give an interpretation.

The camera is my tool. Through it I give a reason to everything around me.

For this very reason I refuse all the tricks of the trade and professional virtuosity which could make me betray my career. As soon as I find a subject which interests me, I leave it to the lens to record it truthfully. Look at the reporters and at the amateur photographer! They both have only one goal; to record a memory or a document. And that is pure photography.

Seeing is not enough; you have to feel what you photograph

If you want to write you should learn the alphabet. You write and write and in the end you hava a beautiful, perfect alphabet. But it isn’t the alphabed that is important. The important thing is what you are writing, what you are expressing. The same thing goes for photography. Photographs can be technically perfect and even beautiful, but they have no expression.

I can't talk about my style. It us kind of difficult for me. I don't like styles. I only like taking photos and expressing myself through them.