The portrait of a person is one of the most difficult things to do. It means you must almost bring the presence of that person photographed to other people in such a way that they don't have to know that person personally, but that they are still confronted with a human being that they won't forget. That's a portrait.

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

If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own, you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph.

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

Photography is only a new road from a different direction, but moving toward the common goal, which is life.

It is one thing to photograph people. It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their humanness.

Did I express my personality? I think that's quite unimportant because it's not people's selves but what they have to say about life that's important.