Annie Leibovitz famous quotes

I didn't want to let women down. One of the stereotypes I see breaking is the idea of aging and older women not being beautiful.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Beautiful #Ideas #Want

There's an idea that it's hard to be a woman artist. People assume that women have fewer opportunities, less power. But it's not any harder to be a woman artist than to be a male artist. We all take what we are given and use the parts of ourselves that feed the work. We make our way. Photographers, men and women, are particularly lucky. Photography lets you find yourself. It is a passport to people and places and to possibilities.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Photography #Artist #Opportunity

A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Inspirational #Photography #Falling In Love

Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy - your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Dance #Strong #Powerful

The camera makes you forget you're there. It's not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Inspirational #Photography #Cameras

You don't have to sort of enhance reality. There is nothing stranger than truth.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Reality #Photographer #Stranger

When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I'd like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Inspirational #Photography #Mean

My lens of choice was always the 35 mm. It was more environmental. You can't come in closer with the 35 mm.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Artist #Choices #Environmental

There must be a reason why photographers are not very good at verbal communication. I think we get lazy.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Communication #Artist #Thinking

What I learned from Lennon was something that did stay with me my whole career, which is to be very straightforward. I actually love talking about taking pictures, and I think that helps everyone.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Artist #Thinking #Talking

One doesn't stop seeing. One doesn't stop framing. It doesn't turn off and turn on. It's on all the time.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Inspirational #Framing #Turns

Everyone keeps asking you for pictures, and after a while you get tired of that. I always say, They are in the archives.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Tired #Archives #Asking

I’ve said about a million times that the best thing a young photographer can do is to stay close to home. Start with your friends and family, the people who will put up with you. Discover what it means to be close to your work, to be intimate with a subject. Measure the difference between that and working with someone you don't know as much about. Of course there are many good photographs that have nothing to do with staying close to home, and I guess what I'm really saying is that you should take pictures of something that has meaning for you
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Home #Mean #Differences

A photograph is just a tiny slice of a subject. A piece of them in a moment. It seems presumptuous to think you can get more than that.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Thinking #Pieces #Tiny

When I take a picture I take 10 percent of what I see.
-- Annie Leibovitz

I’d like to think that the actions we take today will allow others in the future to discover the wonders of landscapes we helped protect but never had the chance to enjoy ourselves.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Thinking #Landscape #Today

I feel a responsibility to my backyard. I want it to be taken care of and protected.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Taken #Responsibility #Artist

I'm more interested in being good than being famous.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Fame #Be Good

I still need the camera because it is the only reason anyone is talking to me.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Artist #Talking #Cameras

In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Views #Portraits #May

My hope is that we continue to nurture the places that we love, but that we also look outside our immediate worlds.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Looks #World #Photographer

I wish that all of nature's magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Inspirational #Photography #Land

I am impressed with what happens when someone stays in the same place and you took the same picture over and over and it would be different, every single frame.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Artist #Different #Would Be

A very subtle difference can make the picture or not.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Differences #Photographer #Subtle

Computer photography won't be photography as we know it. I think photography will always be chemical.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Photography #Thinking #Computer

You have trust in what you think. If you splinter yourself and try to please everyone, you can’t. It’s important to stay the course. I don’t think I would have lasted this long if I’d listened to anyone. You have to listen somewhat and then put that to the side and know that what you do matters.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Thinking #Long #Important

Things happen in front of you. That's perhaps the most wonderful and mysterious aspect of photography.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Photography #Mysterious #Wonderful

You have trust in what you think. If you splinter yourself and try to please everyone, you can't.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Inspiring #Thinking #Trying

If it makes you cry, it goes in the show.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Photographer #Cry #Shows

I was out there with the White House press squad, and after his helicopter took off, and the carpet rolled up...This wasn't a photograph that others were taking, but I continued to take pictures.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Inspirational #Squad #White

A lot can be told from what happens in between the main moments.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Moments

My early childhood equipped me really well for my portrait work: The quick encounter, where you are not going to know the subject for very long. These days I am much more comfortable with the fifteen minute relationship, than I am with a life long relationship.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Long #Childhood #Portraits

I actually love talking about taking pictures, and I think that helps everyone.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Thinking #Talking #Helping

The pictures of my family were designed to be on a family wall, they were supposed to be together. It was supposed to copy my mother's wall in her house.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Mother #Wall #House

I don't try to overintellectua lize my concepts of people. In fact, the ideas I have, if you talk about them, they seem extremely corny and it's only in their execution that people can enjoy them...It's something I've learned to trust: The stupider it is, the better it looks.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Ideas #People #Trying

I fight to take a good photograph every single time.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Fighting #Photograph

I've always cared more about taking pictures than about the art market.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Art #Photographer #Taking Pictures

I sometimes find the surface interesting. To say that the mark of a good portrait is whether you get them or get the soul - I don't think this is possible all of the time.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Thinking #Interesting #Soul

No one ever thought Clint Eastwood was funny, but he was.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Funny

Nature is so powerful, so strong. It takes you to a place within yourself.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Strong #Powerful

A photograph is just a little, teeny-weeny, small piece of life. I feel like I see so much more than what I can actually get.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Photography #Pieces #Littles

People buy ideas, they don't buy photographs.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Photography #Ideas #People

I'm pretty used to people not liking having their picture taken. I mean, if you do like to have your picture taken, I worry about you.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Photography #Taken #Mean

It's hard to watch something go on and be talking at the same time.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Talking #Watches #Goes On

All dancers are, by and large, a photographer's dream. They communicate with their bodies and they are trained to be completely responsive to a collaborative situation.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Dream #Dancer #Body

When I'm asked about my work, I try to explain that there is no mystery involved. It is work. But things happen all the time that are unexpected, uncontrolled, unexplainable, even magical. The work prepares you for that moment. Suddenly the clouds roll in and the soft light you longed for appears.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Clouds #Light #Trying

In this day and age of things moving so, so fast, we still long for things to stop, and we as a society love the still image. Every time there is some terrible or great moment, we remember the stills.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Moving #Long #Age

Photography is not something you retire from.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Photography #Retiring

I think self-portraits are very difficult. I’ve always seen mine as straightforward, very stripped down, hair pulled back. No shirt. Whatever light happened to be available. I’d want it to be very graphic – about darkness and light. No one else should be there, but I’m scared to do it by myself. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. The whole idea of a self-portrait is strange. I’m so strongly linked to how I see through the camera that to get to the other side of it would be difficult. It would be as if I were taking a photograph in the dark.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Dark #Thinking #Light

When you are younger, the camera is like a friend and you can go places and feel like you're with someone, like you have a companion.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Artist #Cameras #Photographer

When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Artist #Rolling #Stones

What I end up shooting is the situation. I shoot the composition and my subject is going to help the composition or not.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Artist #Shooting #Helping

Lennon was very helpful. What he taught me seems completely obvious: he expected people to treat each other well.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#People #Taught #Helpful

I've created a vocabulary of different styles. I draw from many different ways to take a picture. Sometimes I go back to reportage, to journalism.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Artist #Vocabulary #Style

I feel very proud of the work from the '80s because it is very bright and colorful.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Proud #Feels #80s

The work which is manipulated looks a little boring to me. I think life is pretty strange anyway. It is wooo, wooo, wooo!
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Thinking #Looks #Littles

Coming tight was boring to me, just the face... it didn't have enough information.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Artist #Information #Faces

At my Rolling Stones' tour, the camera was a protection. I used it in a Zen way.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Cameras #Rolling #Stones

It's a heavy weight, the camera. Now we have modern and lightweight, small plastic cameras, but in the '70s they were heavy metal.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Artist #Weight #Cameras

When you go to take someone's picture, the first thing they say is, what you want me to do? Everyone is very awkward.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Artist #Awkward #Want

What I am interested in now is the landscape. Pictures without people. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually there are no people in my pictures. It is so emotional.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Emotional #People #Landscape

As a young person, and I know it’s hard to believe that I was shy, but you could take your camera, and it would take you to places: it was like having a friend, like having someone to go out with and look at the world. I would do things with a camera I wouldn’t do normally if I was just by myself.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Believe #Cameras #Shy

I shoot a little bit, maybe two rolls, medium format, which is 20 pictures, and if it's not working, I change the position.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Two #Littles #Mediums

If I didn't have my camera to remind me constantly, I am here to do this, I would eventually have slipped away, I think. I would have forgotten my reason to exist.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Thinking #Cameras #Forgotten

When you are on assignment, film is the least expensive thing in a very practical sense. Your time, the person's time, turns out to be the most valuable thing.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Film #Assignments #Valuable

The first thing I did with my very first camera was climb Mt. Fuji. Climbing Mt. Fuji is a lesson in determination and moderation. It would be fair to ask if I took the moderation part to heart. But it certainly was a lesson in respecting your camera. If I was going to live with this thing, I was going to have to think about what that meant. There were not going to be any pictures without it.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Determination #Heart #Thinking

Sometimes I enjoy just photographing the surface because I think it can be as revealing as going to the heart of the matter.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Heart #Thinking #Matter

As you get older, you have different tools, and you learn to use photography differently.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Photography #Different #Tools

I was scared to do anything in the studio because it felt so claustrophobic. I wanted to be somewhere where things could happen and the subject wasn't just looking back at you.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Artist #Scared #Wanted

I admired the work of photographers like Beaton, Penn, and Avedon as much as I respected the grittier photographers such as Robert Frank. But in the same way that I had to find my own way of reportage, I had to find my own form of glamour.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Way #Photographer #Glamour

I don't think there is anything wrong with white space. I don't think it's a problem to have a blank wall.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Wall #Thinking #White

There are still so many places on our planet that remain unexplored. I'd love to one day peel back the mystery and understand them.
-- Annie Leibovitz

#Artist #One Day #Mystery