Robert Frank Quotes

#1. You do your work as a photographer and everything becomes past. Words are more like thoughts; the photographer's picture is always surrounded by a kind of romantic glamor - no matter what you do, and how you twist it.

Robert Frank

#2. Words are more thoughts;
the photographed images always
ends up having a romantic gloss about it
- no matter how I try to avoid it.

Robert Frank

#3. I always say that I don't want to be sentimental, that the photographs shouldn't be sentimental, and yet, I am conscious of my sentimentality.

Robert Frank

#4. At a certain level of wealth, you care more about things like the environment and what's going to happen to later generations than preserving your own money.

Robert Frank

#5. The eye should learn to listen before it looks.

Robert Frank

#6. It is always the instantaneous reaction to oneself that produces a photograph.

Robert Frank

#7. My photographs are not planned or composed in advance, and I do not anticipate that the onlooker will share my viewpoint. However, I feel that if my photograph leaves an image on his mind, something has been accomplished.

Robert Frank

#8. I have been frequently accused of deliberately twisting subject matter to my point of view. Above all, I know that life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference. Opinion often consists of a kind of criticism. But criticism can come out of love.

Robert Frank

#9. As morally troubling and politically charged as the issue of inequality has become, it's not likely to cause a populist revolt. Most Americans still have a generally positive view of the wealthy and, rightly or wrongly, believe they too can make it to Richistan someday.

Robert Frank

#10. Above all, life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference

Robert Frank

#11. I am always looking outside, trying to say something that is true. But maybe nothing is really true. Except what's out there. And what's out there is constantly changing.

Robert Frank

#12. When people look at my pictures I want them to feel the way they do when they want to read a line of a poem twice.

Robert Frank

#13. There is one thing the photograph must contain, the humanity of the moment. This kind of photography is realism. But realism is not enough - there has to be vision, and the two together can make a good photograph.

Robert Frank

#14. Black and white are the colors of photography. To me they symbolize the alternatives of hope and despair to which mankind is forever subjected.

Robert Frank