Brassai Quotes

… we photographers are nothing but a pack of crooks, thieves and voyeurs. We are to be found everywhere we are not wanted; we betray secrets that were never entrusted to us; we spy shamelessly on things that are not our business; And end up the hoarders of a vast quantity of stolen goods.

What attracts the photographer is precisely the chance to penetrate inside phenomena, to uncover forms… He pursues them into their last refuges and surprises them at their most positive, their most material and true.

To keep from going stale you must forget your professional outlook and rediscover the virginal eye of the amateur.

There are many photographs which are full of life but
which are confusing and difficult to remember.
It is the force of an image which matters.

In the absence of a subject with which you are passionately involved, and without the excitement that drives you to grasp it and exhaust it, you may take some beautiful pictures, but not a photographic oeuvre.

The wall, safe haven for what is forbidden, gives a voice to all those who would, without it, be condemned to silence

My images were surreal simply in the sense that my vision brought out the fantastic dimension of reality. My only aim was to express reality, for there is nothing more surreal than reality itself. If reality fails to fill us with wonder, it is because we have fallen into the habit of seeing it as ordinary.

To me photography must suggest, not insist or explain.

I think education and intelligence (are) important, but not art. Not artistic education.

Beauty is not the purpose of creation, it is its reward. Its appearance, often late in the day, is no more than an indication that the disrupted equilibrium between man and nature has once again been restored by art. Submitted to this test, what remains of contemporary works of art?

A poor photographer meets chance one out of a hundred times and a good photographer meets chance all the time.

I don’t invent anything. I imagine everything… most of the time, I have drawn my images from the daily life around me. I think that it is by capturing reality in the humblest, most sincere, most everyday way I can, that I can penetrate to the extraordinary.

After twenty years you can begin to be sure of what camera will do.

Only powerfully conceived images have the ability to penetrate the memory, to stay there, in short to become unforgettable.

For me the criterion of a good photograph is that it is unforgettable.