“We are not interested in the unusual, but in the usual seen unusually.”

Documentary is, therefore, an approach, which makes use of the artistic faculties to give vivification to fact – to use Walt Whitman’s definition of the place of poetry in the modern world.

Wherever there is disaster, the newsman is there. If he cannot find disaster, he searches for the odd and the peculiar, the exotic and the unfamiliar.

Over the years, photography has been to me what a journal is to a writer – a record of things seen and experienced, moments in the flow of time, documents of significance to me, experiments in seeing.

The greatest challenge to the photographer is to express the inner significance through the outward form.

The direct use of the camera for what it can do best, and that is the revelation, interpretation, and discovery of the world of man and of nature.

The leavening of aesthetic approaches continues. While it is too soon to define the characteristic of the photographic style today, one common denominator, rooted in tradition, seems in the ascendancy.

The present challenge to the photographer is to express inner significance through outward form.

More and more are turning to photography as a medium of expression as well as communication.

It has been important to me, as an historian of photography, to understand photography by photographing.

If the historian will be faithful to the photograph, the photograph will be faithful to history.

His photographs, seen by millions, make momentary events and strange occurrences all over the world our common property.

The fundamental belief in the authenticity of photographs explains why photographs of people no longer living and of vanished architecture are so melancholy.

It’s important to collect unusual characters. It keeps you sharp.

Well, I’ve read through that handbook for the recently deceased. It says, ‘live people ignore the strange and unusual. I, myself, am strange and unusual.

Genius of the highest kind implies an unusual intensity of the modifying power.

I ended up doubling the math time that a conventional school would have. But I don’t think any of these things were path-breaking or unusual.

When, according to habit, I was contemplating the stars in a clear sky, I noticed a new and unusual star, surpassing the other stars in brilliancy . . . .

One grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised, but it is unusual to be understood.

Anything injured, or any unusual creature somebody found, they would always come to our doorstep.

I’ve learned new footwork patterns that are very unusual. I’ve learned how to find a lower centre of gravity, and I’ve found more angles to throw shots.