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

Because we see reality in different ways, we must understand that we are looking at different truths rather than the truth and that, therefore, all photographs lie in one way or another.

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.

In practice a photographer does not concern himself with philosophical issues while working; he makes photographs, working with subject matter that he thinks will make the pictures.

Like an organism, photography was born whole. It is in our progressive discovery of it that its history lies.

Trained as a musician, [photographer Ansel] Adams understood the richness of variation that could be unfolded from a simple theme.

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