If you take your inspiration from nature, you don't invent anything, because what you want to do is to interpret something. But still, everything passes throught your imagination. What you produce at the end is very different from the reality you started with.
BrassaiTo keep from going stale you must forget your professional outlook and rediscover the virginal eye of the amateur.
BrassaiI don't invent anything. I imagine everything... most of the time, I have drawn my images from the daily life around me. I think that it is by capturing reality in the humblest, most sincere, most everyday way I can, that I can penetrate to the extraordinary.
BrassaiMy images were surreal simply in the sense that my vision brought out the fantastic dimension of reality. My only aim was to express reality, for there is nothing more surreal than reality itself. If reality fails to fill us with wonder, it is because we have fallen into the habit of seeing it as ordinary.
Brassai