56 Quotes by Berenice Abbott

There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.

Photography helps people to see.

Looking for art, the theme gets lost.Finding the theme is finding art.

I didn't decide to be a photographer; I just happened to fall into it.

Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.

The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.

Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.

The challenge for me has first been to see things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing ball. In a word, I have tried to be objective. What I mean by objectivity is not the objectivity of a machine, but of a sensible human being with the mystery of personal selection at the heart of it. The second challenge has been to impose order onto the things seen and to supply the visual context and the intellectual framework - that to me is the art of photography.

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