Objectivity is of the very essence of photography, its contribution and at the same time its limitation

If Ansel Adams gets a thousand dollars a print, I want ten thousand.

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

The artist is one who makes a concentrated statement about the world in which he lives and that statement tends to become impersonal-it tends to become universal and enduring because it comes out of something very particular.

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!

Whether a watercolor is inferior to an oil [painting], or whether a drawing, an etching, or a photograph is not as important as either, is inconsequent. To have to despise something in order to respect something else is a sign of impotence.

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.