Quotes by
Brian Duffy

One of the great problems with photography is that any twat you give a camera to can take a photograph. What that does to the photographer is immediately create an inferiority complex within him because anyone can do it, which of course they can.

I went into a burning mode. I felt everything I had to do and say in photography had been done. [Irving Penn and Richard Avedon] fucked photography for us... They got there.

Ninety-nine per cent of my work was advertising and crap. The people who were hiring me I didn’t like. Keeping a civil tongue up the rectum of a society that keeps you paid is an art which I was devoid of. I had nothing more to say in photographs.

Before 1960, a fashion photographer was tall, thin and camp. But we three are different: short, fat and heterosexual.

Photography was dead by 1972. Everything had been resolved between 1839 and 1972. Every picture after ‘72, I have seen pre-‘72. Nothing new. But it took me some time to detect its death. The first person who twigged was Henri Cartier-Bresson. He just stopped—and started painting and drawing. God, he was useless.

I thought, Gawd this looks dead easy compared to the drawing lark. I’ll give this a whiz. Take up photography as an easy way to make money. Just my sort of thing—women, gadgets, clothes—I must have a go at it.

I never wanted to be famous. I wasn’t as steady as a tripod.