photojournalism quotes

The basic unit of photojournalism is one picture with words.

One of the leading uses of photography by the mass media came to be called photojournalism. From the late ‘twenties’ to the early ‘fifties’ what might have been the golden age of this speciality – photographers worked largely as the possessors of special and arcane skills, like the ancient priests who practiced and monopolized the skills of pictography or carving or manuscript illumination. In those halcyon days the photographer enjoyed a privileged status.

I am a very emotional person to begin with, but you have to try and control yourself. If you start thinking about what is happening - especially when photographing people who are suffering - and get too involved, you stop thinking as a journalist and you don't take the picture. It's a psychological trick, learning self-control. You have to keep reminding yourself why are there.

I believe that the chief value of photography as a means of communication depends entirely on the ability of the camera to arrest life instantly. It thrills me to speculate how the invention of photography has contributed to the speeding up of human reflexes. The rapidly working camera has sharpened man’s capacity to observe and observe rapidly; it has taught many of us to use our minds to classify visual phenomena in an instant of time; to relate our own attitude to that of the person in front of the camera in a split second. This to my mind is the essence of photojournalism.

You have to love this job because the schedules, the emotional ups and downs, the pressures would sometimes be too much of you didn't love it. It's a creative field. If you go to a game and make a good picture or shoot a nice portrait, you go home feeling great, but if you miss something, you go home feeling awful.

Some photojournalists talk about being a fly on the wall when shooting. I really don't accept that. You have to give of yourself for your subjects to give something back.