One cannot use the life to interpret the work. But One can use the work to interpret the life.

If tragedy is an experience of hyperinvolvement, comedy is an experience of underinvolvement, of detachment.

You can go into all sorts of situations with a camera and people will think they should serve it.

In every society, the definitions of sanity and madness are arbitrary - are, in the largest sense, political.

Compassion is an unstable emotion. It needs to be translated into action, or it withers.

Because each photograph is only a fragment, its moral and emotional weight depends on where it is inserted. A photograph changes according to the context in which it is seen: thus Smith's Minamata photographs will seem different on a contact sheet, in a gallery, in a political demonstration, in a police file, in a photographic magazine, in a book, on a living-room wall. Each o these situations suggest a different use for the photographs but none can secure their meaning.

The camera makes everyone a tourist in other people's reality, and eventually in one's own.