Most of Tina Modotti's work that is known to the photography world was done in Mexico in the years 1923 through 1926, when she lived and worked with Edward Weston.

The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture edge - the line that separates in from out - and on the shapes that are created by it.

Photography is a system of visual editing. At bottom, it is a matter of surrounding with a frame a portion of one's cone of vision, while standing in the right place at the right time. Like chess, or writing, it is a matter of choosing from among given possibilities, but in the case of photography the number of possibilities is not finite but infinite.

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.

Whatever else a photograph may be about, it is inevitably about photography, the container and vehicle of all its meanings.

Luck is the attentive photographer's best teacher.