The very best pictures adapt themselves to many changes in meaning.

Photography's central sense of purpose and aesthetic: the precise and lucid description of significant fact.

The world now contains more photographs than bricks, and they are, astonishingly, all different.

Photography is a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. The contest can be held anywhere.

A camera has interesting ideas of its own.

The basic material of photographs is not intrinsically beautiful. It's not like ivory or tapestry or bronze or oil on canvas. You're not supposed to look at the thing, you're supposed to look through it. It's a window.

Photography was not invented to serve a clearly understood function. There was in fact widespread uncertainty, even among its inventors, as to what it might be good for.