Now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. Such rules and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection.

My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.

Restricting too personal, and therefore prejudiced, interpretation leads to revolution – the fusion of an inner and outer reality derived from the wholeness of life – sublimating things seen into things known.

I was extravagant in the matter of cameras – anything photographic – I had to have the best. But that was to further my work. In most things I have gone along with the plainest – or without.

It’s hard not to tell the truth with a camera. Artists are particularly good at that.

No photographer is better than the simplest of cameras.

Modern Art is being used to index me. Surely it was a source but photographers have influenced Modern Art quite as deeply as they have been influenced, maybe more. Anyway painters don’t have a copyright on M. A. We were all born in the same upheaval.

The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer’s understanding of his subject and mastery of his process.

Art is based on order. The world is full of ‘sloppy Bohemians’ and their work betrays them.

People who wouldn’t think of taking a sieve to the well to draw water fail to see the folly in taking a camera to make a painting.