“Suppose we took a thousand negatives… combining the elegances, the squalor, the curiosities, the monuments, the sad faces, the triumphant faces, the power, the irony, the strength, the decay, the past, the present, the future of a city – that would be my favorite picture.”

The second challenge has been to impose order onto the things seen and to supply the visual context and the intellectual framework – that to me is the art of photography.

I wanted to combine science and photography in a sensible, unemotional way. Some people’s ideas of scientific photography is just arty design, something pretty. That was not the idea.

Photography is not only drawing with light, though light is the indispensable agent of its being. It is modeling or sculpturing with light, to reproduce the plastic form of natural objects. It is painting with light.

I have yet to see a fine photograph which is not a good document.

There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.

The art is in selecting what is worthwhile to take the trouble about.

I think the important decision for a photographer is to choose a subject that intensely interests him or her.

Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself.

Self-conscious artiness is fatal, but it certainly would not hurt to study composition in general. Having a basic understanding of composition would help construct a better organized image.

The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.

The idea was to interpret science sensibly, with good proportion, good balance and good lighting, so we could understand it.

The photograph may be presented as finely and artistically as you will; but to merit serious consideration, must be directly connected with the world we live in.

The photographer is the contemporary being par excellence; through his eyes the now becomes the past.

Like every other means of expression, photography, if it is to be utterly honest and direct, should be related to the life of the times-the pulse of today.

What the human eye observes casually and incuriously, the eye of the camera (the lens) notes with relentless fidelity.

If a medium is representational by nature of the realistic image formed by a lens, I see no reason why we should stand on our heads to distort that function. On the contrary, we should take hold of that very quality, make use of it, and explore it to the fullest.