Dorothea Lange Quotes

Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.

You know there are moments such as these when time stands still and all you do is hold your breath and hope it will wait for you.

I had to get my camera to register things that were more important than how poor they were–their pride, their strength, their spirit.

Photographers stop photographing a subject too soon before they have exhausted the possibilities.

The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects.

… it came to me that what I had to do was to take pictures and concentrate upon people, only people, all kinds of people, people who paid me and people who didn’t.

Ours is a time of the machine, and ours is a need to know that the machine can be put to creative human effort. If not, the machine can destroy us.

I trust my instincts. I don’t distrust them. They haven’t led me astray. It’s when I’ve made up my mind to be efficient that is when I have gone wrong.