As time passes by and you look at portraits, the people come back to you like a silent echo. A photograph is a vestige of a face, a face in transit. Photography has something to do with death. It's a trace.

A photograph is neither taken or seized by force. It offers itself up. It is the photo that takes you. One must not take photos.

Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again.

The intensive use of photographs by mass media lays ever fresh responsibilities upon the photographer. We have to acknowledge the existence of a chasm between the economic needs of our consumer society and the requirements of those who bear witness to this epoch. This affects us all, particularly the younger generations of photographers. We must take greater care than ever not to allow ourselves to be separated from the real world and from humanity.

Everyone has got some preconceptions, but you have to readjust them in front of reality. Reality has the last word.

Photography is only intuition, a perpetual interrogation - everything except a stage set.

To take photographs means to recognize - simultaneously and within a fraction of a second - both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one's head, one's eye and one's heart on the same axis.