Annie Leibovitz Quotes

In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative.

The subjects felt more comfortable if they played the role than if they had to be themselves.

When I was younger, I did things with a camera I would not do by myself. I remember going down to the docks in San Francisco and asking a fisherman if he would take me out on his boat. I would never do that without a camera.

I fight to take a good photograph every single time.

A photograph is just a tiny slice of a subject. A piece of them in a moment. It seems presumptuous to think you can get more than that.

Photography is not something you retire from.

What I am interested in now is the landscape. Pictures without people. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually there are no people in my pictures. It is so emotional.

It's a heavy weight, the camera. Now we have modern and lightweight, small plastic cameras, but in the '70s they were heavy metal.

I've always cared more about taking pictures than about the art market.

I'm more interested in being good than being famous.

A very subtle difference can make the picture or not.

Photography's like this baby that needs to be fed all the time. It's always hungry.

In this day and age of things moving so, so fast, we still long for things to stop, and we as a society love the still image. Every time there is some terrible or great moment, we remember the stills.

I wish that all of nature's magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed.

I'm pretty used to people not liking having their picture taken. I mean, if you do like to have your picture taken, I worry about you.

The camera makes you forget you're there. It's not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.

I feel a responsibility to my backyard. I want it to be taken care of and protected.

Irving Penn said he didn't want to photograph anyone under 60, and I think there is some truth about it.

I am impressed with what happens when someone stays in the same place and you took the same picture over and over and it would be different, every single frame.

Everyone keeps asking you for pictures, and after a while you get tired of that. I always say, They are in the archives.

One doesn't stop seeing. One doesn't stop framing. It doesn't turn off and turn on. It's on all the time.

I still need the camera because it is the only reason anyone is talking to me.

Things happen in front of you. That's perhaps the most wonderful and mysterious aspect of photography.

A lot can be told from what happens in between the main moments.

At my Rolling Stones' tour, the camera was a protection. I used it in a Zen way.

I actually love talking about taking pictures, and I think that helps everyone.

I love having the photograph in my hand. I love looking at the photograph. I love looking at a box of photographs. I just love the still photograph.

If it makes you cry, it goes in the show.

There must be a reason why photographers are not very good at verbal communication. I think we get lazy.

I think self-portraits are very difficult. I’ve always seen mine as straightforward, very stripped down, hair pulled back. No shirt. Whatever light happened to be available. I’d want it to be very graphic – about darkness and light. No one else should be there, but I’m scared to do it by myself. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. The whole idea of a self-portrait is strange. I’m so strongly linked to how I see through the camera that to get to the other side of it would be difficult. It would be as if I were taking a photograph in the dark.

When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I'd like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph.

I was out there with the White House press squad, and after his helicopter took off, and the carpet rolled up...This wasn't a photograph that others were taking, but I continued to take pictures.

You have trust in what you think. If you splinter yourself and try to please everyone, you can't.

When I started to be published I thought about Margaret Bourke-White and the whole journalistic approach to things. I believed I was supposed to catch life going by me - that I wasn't to alter it or tamper with it - that I was just to watch what was going on and report it as best I could. This shoot with John was different. I got involved, and I realized that you can't help but be touched by what goes on in front of you. I no longer believe that there is such a thing as objectivity.

Computer photography won't be photography as we know it. I think photography will always be chemical.

Everyone has a point of view. Some people call it style, but what we're really talking about is the guts of a photograph. When you trust your point of view, that's when you start taking pictures.

I was scared to do anything in the studio because it felt so claustrophobic. I wanted to be somewhere where things could happen and the subject wasn't just looking back at you.

My lens of choice was always the 35 mm. It was more environmental. You can't come in closer with the 35 mm.

When I take a picture I take 10 percent of what I see.

I admired the work of photographers like Beaton, Penn, and Avedon as much as I respected the grittier photographers such as Robert Frank. But in the same way that I had to find my own way of reportage, I had to find my own form of glamour.

Most people, especially successful people, are hard-working. They want to participate. They want to do things well.

My early childhood equipped me really well for my portrait work: The quick encounter, where you are not going to know the subject for very long. These days I am much more comfortable with the fifteen minute relationship, than I am with a life long relationship.

There is a myth that the portrait photographer is supposed to make the subject relax, and that's the real person. But I'm interested in whatever is going on. And I'm not that comfortable myself.

When you involve people, they come out, you see them, you get to see their sense of humor.

No one ever thought Clint Eastwood was funny, but he was.

There are still so many places on our planet that remain unexplored. I'd love to one day peel back the mystery and understand them.

When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't.

People buy ideas, they don't buy photographs.