The greats of street photographers & one record Guy

"I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapon against what I hated most about the universe: racism, intolerance, poverty."

"I am not interested in showing my work to photographers anymore, but to people outside the photo-clique."  My pictures are not escapes from reality, but a contemplation of reality, so I can experience life in a deeper way."

"You fill up the frame with feelings, energy, discovery and risk, and leave room enough for someone else to get in there.  Photography is about being exquisitely present. "

"I don't believe a person has a style.  What a person has is a way of photographing what is inside them. What is there comes out."

“There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment.”  

"There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture.  Your eye must see a  composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment of the photographer is creative.  Oop! The Moment!  Once you miss it, it is gone forever."

"Leaving aside the mysteries and the inequities of human talent, brains, taste, and reputations, the matter of art in photography may come down to this: it is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing;  it is the defining of observation full and felt. "

“I am not interested in shooting new things. I am interested to see things new.  In this way I am a photographer with a problem with the problems of a painter. The desire is to find the limiation of the camera so I can overcome them.”

“So who can pin down photography?  We're drunk with images.  [Sontag's] sick of it.  I'm sick of it. But we're moved by old amateur photographs because they aren't concerned about theories of photography or what a picture must be. They are just photographs without rules or dogma.” 

“One of the most exciting things about street photography is waking up every day and not knowing what you’re going to come back with…that’s the  magic.”  

"Making a definitive declaration or meaning kills the photograph."

“Living life as an artist is a practice. You are either engaging in the practice or you’re not.  It makes no sense to say you’re not good at it. It’s like saying, “I’m not good at being a monk.” You are either living as a monk or you’re not.

We tend to think of the artist’s work as the output. The real work of the artist is a way of being in the world."