It is easy to make a picture of someone and call it a portrait. The difficulty lies in making a picture that makes the viewer care about a stranger.

I think of myself as an explorer who has spent his life on a long voyage of discovery.

To be a photographer you must have something to say about the world.

I read the other day that Minor White said it takes twenty years to become a photographer. I think that is a bit of an exaggeration. I would say, judging from myself, that it takes at least eight or nine years. But it does not take any longer than it takes to learn to play the piano or the violin. If it takes twenty years, you might as well forget about it!

If the photographer is not a discoverer, then he is not an artist.

I like to photograph people who have strength and dignity in their faces. Whatever life has done to them, it hasn’t destroyed them.

Photography... is either an expression of a cosmic vision, an embodiment of a life movement or it is nothing - to me. (1919)