Eve Arnold Quotes

It’s hard for me to assess what I brought because each time you pick up a camera and point it at a person, you’re trying to define that person so to talk generally is difficult because I have to think of a given image in order to conjure up what we’re talking about.

I find going back through things sometimes exhilarating because I find things I didn’t know I had, and sometimes it’s very off putting because there are things I never quite finished, and there’s nothing at all to do about it now.

Being a woman is just a marvelous plus in photographing. Men like to be photographed by women, it becomes flirtatious and fun, and women feel less as if they’re expected to be in a relationship.

A studio session … provides the greatest chance for control. Even though there is total freedom, I still dislike studio photography and the contrived images that usually stem from this genre.

I never knew anyone who came close to Marilyn in natural ability to use both photographer and still camera. She was
special in this, and for me there has been no one like her before or after. She has remained the measuring rod by which I have – unconsciously – judged
other subjects.

If you are careful with people, they will offer you part of themselves. That is the big secret.

Lesson number one: Pay attention to the intrusion of the camera.

If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.

It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.

I realise that I had the best of serious picture journalism. There was an innocence in our approach, especially in the 1950s and 1960s when we naively believed that by holding a mirror up to the world we could help – no matter how little – to make people aware of the human condition.

If the photographer is interested in the people in front of his lens, and if he is compassionate, it’s already a lot. The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.

What has changed is that when I photographed, most people that I photographed didn’t have the right of refusal on their work. It would take a Marilyn Monroe at her height to be able to dictate that.

What drove me and kept me going over the decades? If I had to use a single word, it would be ‘curiosity.’

You can’t make a great musician or a great photographer if the magic isn’t there.

If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given.

I think if I ever get satisfied, I’ll have to stop. It’s the frustration that drives you.

What drove me and kept me going over the decades? If I had to use a single word, it would be ‘curiosity.

I look for a sense of reality with everything I did. I didn’t work in a studio, I didn’t light anything. I found a way of working which pleased me because I didn’t have to frighten people with heavy equipment. It was that little black box and me and ВЈ5 worth of film in my pocket or maybe it was only ВЈ2 in those days.

I don’t see anybody as either ordinary or extraordinary. I see them simply as people in front of my lens.

It’s the hardest thing in the world to take the mundane and try to show how special it is.

I came to photography by accident.

What I have tried to do is involve the people I was photographing… if they were willing to give, I was willing to photograph.