Today we are confronted with reality on the vastest scale mankind has known and this puts a greater responsibility on the photographer.

What the human eye observes casually and incuriously, the eye of the camera (the lens) notes with relentless fidelity.

To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it. The photographer creates, evolves a better, more selective, more acute eye by looking ever more sharply at what is going on in the world. Like every other means of expression, photography, if it is to be utterly honest and direct, should be related to the life of the times-the pulse of today. The photograph may be presented as finely and artistically as you will, but to merit serious consideration, must be directly connected with the world we live in.

The art is in selecting what is worthwhile to take the trouble about.

Pictures are wasted unless the motive power which impelled you to action is strong and stirring.

The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.

I wanted to combine science and photography in a sensible, unemotional way. Some people’s ideas of scientific photography is just arty design, something pretty. That was not the idea. The idea was to interpret science sensibly, with good proportion, good balance and good lighting, so we could understand it.