Quotes by
Lisette Model

The camera is an instrument of detection. We photograph not only what we know, but also what we don't know.

I have often been asked what I wanted to prove by my photographs. The answer is, I don’t want to prove anything. They prove to me, and I am the one who gets the lesson.

... photography is an art form which means: human beings expressing their understanding of and connection with life, themselves, and other human beings.

New images surround us everywhere. They are invisible only because of sterile routine convention and fear.

Don't shoot until you feel it in your gut.

I just picked up a camera without any kind of ambition to be good or bad. And especially without any ambition to make a living... My whole freedom working in photography comes because I say to myself, “Let’s see what is going on in this world. Let’s find out. How do these people look?”

It is of importance for photographers to realize that a photograph should be a product of today, not yesterday. It should be concerned with everything in life that is meaningful for us today. Otherwise it is merely an imitation of something that happened yesterday...

[The snapshooter’s] pictures have an apparent disorder and imperfection, which is exactly their appeal and their style. The picture isn’t straight. It isn’t done well. It isn’t composed. It isn’t thought out. And out of this imbalance, and out of this not knowing, and out of this real innocence toward the medium comes an enormous vitality and expression of life.

Never take a picture of anything you are not passionately interested in.

This photographic thing has changed the entire vision of the world. It will go through every activity of humanity - science, medicine, space, ESP, for peace, against peace, entertainment, television, movies, all of them - you will not find one without photography.

I am a pationate lover of the snapshot, because of all photographic images, it comes closest to the truth ... the snapshooter['s] pictures have an apparent disorder and imperfection which is exactly their appeal and their style.

Speed, the fundamental condition of the activities of our day is the powere of photography, indeed the modern art of today, the art of split second.

Photography is the easiest art, which perhaps makes it the hardest.

The snapshot has no pretense or ambition. Innocence is the quintessence of the snapshot. I wish to distinguish between innocence and ignorance. Innocence is one of the highest forms of being and ignorance is one of the lowest.

Placed between the eye of the photographer and the world, the camera reveals both man and the outside world. This in effect is the main photographic situation.