INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES ABOUT PHOTOGRAPHY AND FASHION PHOTOGRAPHY
Today, fashion photography is art’s rising star, drawing large crowds to exhibitions and enticing more collectors.
Through our constant research, we have encountered many quotes about photography and Fashion Photography that have resonated with us. From writers, curators, artists themselves, they provide a better understanding of the art of photography. We felt we should share them and created this page. The order is serendipity, as the lucky encounters they represent. We hope you will enjoy!
Quotes About Photography and Fashion Photography
“To collect photography is to collect the world.” - Susan Sontag
Sontag made photography a subject of serious thought. In this line, a collection becomes a way of looking at the world, and each print one piece of it.
“Fashion pictures are images that showcase style; viewed critically, they offer a means of cultural reflection, tracking changes in societal attitudes, politics, sexuality, social and economic structures, and the value that we ascribe to expressions of individuality.” - Antwaun Sargent
Sargent, a curator and the author of The New Black Vanguard, reads fashion pictures as cultural evidence. Each print from the 1970s to the 2000s records how people wanted to be seen.
“The Fashion image is a Totem” - Antwaun Sargent
“Fashion Photography is art when the photographer is an author” - Raphaelle Stopin, artistic director at Festival International de Mode
Stopin's test for fashion photography as art is authorship. It is a useful question to ask of any print: whose vision is it?
“To emerge in the art world a photographer needs to understand the story they want to convey to the world. It is essential to understand the dynamic of combining everyday life experiences with the fantasy.” - Steven Klein
“Chris von Wangenheim was integral to a movement aimed at bringing an edge to fashion pictures” - Steven Klein
Explore the Chris von Wangenheim collection.
“We are living through history, and the photography of today will be a time capsule for future generations.” - Pam Harris, Fotografiska
“In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.” - Alfred Stieglitz
“The photographic image … is a message without a code” - Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida
“Ultimately, Photography is subversive, not when it frightens, repels, or even stigmatizes, but when it is pensive, when it thinks.” - Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida
“For some years now, I have measured the years by September issues” – Vince Aletti
“The world of photography is one of vision. It is one in which a person’s eye for beauty, pain, wit, social status and many other aspects of the human experience can be made tangible.” - Dr. Deborah Willis
“You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.” - Ansel Adams
“I don't really think that the technique really determines the veracity of the image. It's what the image does to the viewer that determines whether it's right or wrong.” - Roy DeCarava
“I think that photography and art in general should never speak of reality but allude to reality.” - Giovanni Gastel
“It’s a quest for Beauty, a treasure hunt. It’s about finding the right angle, dancing with light and the model’s energy.” - Emmanuelle Hauguel
“Fashion photography is a most fantastic barometer of the time.” - Eugenie Shinkle
“There is this vastness of beauty and elegance that always surrounds us. But one must open one's eyes to see it.” - Richard Phibbs
“There is a lot of light on this planet and there is a lot of unbelievable darkness. I am not interested in the dark.” - Richard Phibbs
“A good photograph is one that steals the soul. Sometimes, this moment only lasts a fraction of a second.” - Sylvie Castioni
“Inside movement there is one moment in which the elements are in balance. Photography must seize the importance of this moment and hold immobile the equilibrium of it.” - Henri Cartier-Bresson
“All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.” - Richard Avedon
Avedon photographed fashion for Harper's Bazaar and Vogue, and portraits for The New Yorker. The line separates accuracy from truth, which is why a fashion image can be exact and still a point of view.
“The beauty of photography is that there's a mystery about it.” - Helmut Newton
“In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view.” - Annie Leibovitz
“A photograph is a secret about a secret.” - Diane Arbus
“Photography does not tell lies, at least black and white photography.” - Malick Sidibé
Sidibé opened Studio Malick in Bamako in 1962 and photographed the city's youth on its own terms. His remark speaks to how a portrait can be staged and still feel direct.
“The triumph of the ephemeral” - Cecil Beaton, on fashion
“Get people to welcome you into their soul, that is what photography is” - Brian Bowen Smith
Quotes About Art
“Artists have the job of documenting their times” - Faith Ringgold
“Beauty is not merely something shallow, but something that mirrors a culture.” - Vincent Peters
“The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live.” - Auguste Rodin
“When everything seems to crumble and nothing appears to make sense anymore, only the total and absolute gratuity of art, its being resistant to any tangible usefulness, its nature being so tragically fleeting and extemporaneous can help us recover the sense of life through the catastrophic and help us ‘riveder le stelle’” - Andrea Bocchiola
“Art is the one place we all turn to for solace.” - Carrie Mae Weems
“The whole culture is telling you to hurry, while the art tells you to take your time. Always listen to the art.” - Junot Díaz
“There is nothing in all the world more beautiful or significant of the laws of the universe than the nude human body.” - Robert Henri
“You know, artists are influenced by other artists. We're all deeply influenced by what's around us; we don't make anything cold. Sometimes we think that we do. But within that, the most important part is that even though we're influenced, what are the levels of invention that we carry forth even as we've been influenced by something that's come before?” - Carrie Mae Weems
Continue exploring
Browse Vintage & Estate and Contemporary photography, read Is Fashion Photography Art?, or see The Eye of Photography: a reflection on the influence of dance on fashion photography.
