With every (informative) photograph, the photographic program becomes poorer by one possibility while the photographic universe becomes richer by one realization.

Photographers, it is true, do not work but they do do something: They create, process, and store symbols.

...there is no everyday activity which does not aspire to be photographed, filmed or videotaped. For there is a general desire to be endlessly remembered and endlessly repeatable.

The act of photography is like going on a hunt in which photographer and camera merge into one indivisible function. This is a hunt for new states of things, situations never seen before, for the improbable, for information.

He who writes must master the rules of grammar. He who shoots photographs needs only to follow the instructions as given by the camera.... This leads to the paradox that the more people shoot photographs, the less they are capable of deciphering them.

The task of a philosophy of photography is to reflect upon [the] possibility of freedom - and thus its significance - in a world dominated by apparatuses; to reflect upon the way in which, despite everything, it is possible for human beings to give significance to their lives in the face of the chance necessity of death. Such a philosophy is necessary because it is the only form of revolution left open to us.

Photographers encode their concepts as photographic images so as to give others information, so as to produce models for them and thereby to become immortal in the memory of others.