For me, at least, studying my subjects first and knowing them personally was essential to taking a good picture.

When you do not like human beings, you cannot make good portraits.

For me, at least, studying my subjects first and knowing them personally was essential to taking a good picture.

Before the first press pictures, the ordinary man would visualize only those events that took place near him, on his street or in his village. Photography opened a window. As the reader's outlook expanded, the world began to shrink.

Yet it seems so easy to take a photograph! One forgets that, apart from the technical aspects, photography can be a mental creation and the affirmation of a personality. What is marvelous about a photograph is that its possibilities are infinite; there aren't any subjects 'done to death'.

Photography is the typical means of expression of a society founded on a civilization of technicians, conscious of the aims it has set for itself... Its power of exactly reproducing external reality, a power inherent in its technique, lends it a documentary character and makes it appear as the most faithful and impartial process for the reproduction of social life.

...in the theatre the stage keeps the audience aware of the fictional nature of the action. The reader poring over a magazine, on the other hand, identifies what he sees in the photographs as real.