Berenice Abbott

“Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.”

“Suppose we took a thousand negatives and made a gigantic montage: a myriad-faceted picture containing the elegances, the squalor, the curiosities, the monuments, the sad faces, the triumphant faces, the power, the irony, the strength, the decay, the past, the present, the future of a city – that would be my favorite picture.”

“I believe there is no more creative medium than photography to recreate the living world of our time. Photography gladly accepts the challenge because it is at home in its element: namely, realism—real life—the now.”

“People say they have to express their emotions. I’m sick of that. Photography doesn’t teach you how to express your emotions; it teaches you how to see.”

“Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.”