Photography Quotes by David Hockney

The lens is a tyranny.

— David Hockney

People criticized me for my photography. They said it's not art.

— David Hockney

Photoshop came out of painting, and now it's going back to painting.

— David Hockney

Photography sees surfaces, it doesn't see space. We see space but the camera doesn't.

— David Hockney

I was always interested in photography because it makes a picture.

— David Hockney

I'm sure that the camera is part of European art.

— David Hockney

All painters are interested in photography to a certain extent.

— David Hockney

The photograph isn't good enough. It's not real enough.

— David Hockney

I've finally figured out what's wrong with photography. It's a one-eyed man looking through a little 'ole. Now, how much reality can…

— David Hockney

The way we see things is constantly changing. At the moment the way we see things has been left a lot to…

— David Hockney

There is nothing wrong with photography, if you don't mind the perspective of a paralysed Cyclops.

— David Hockney

Loads of people, particularly artists, hate pretty pictures. Now I've never met anyone who didn't like a pretty face.

— David Hockney

The history of photography needs clearing out. It needs something else now. Because photography always acknowledged there were cameras before photography.

— David Hockney

I think photography has made us see the landscape in a very dull way - that's one of its effects. It's not…

— David Hockney

How difficult it is to learn not to see like cameras, which has had such an effect on us. The camera sees…

— David Hockney

Photographs aren't accounts of scrutiny. The shutter is open for a fraction of a second.

— David Hockney

The cameras are getting smaller, they're getting more versatile, and eventually, I'm sure you'll have a camera with lots and lots of…

— David Hockney

I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any…

— David Hockney

I can often tell when drawings are done from photographs, because you can tell what they miss out, what the camera misses…

— David Hockney

But the moment you use an ordinary camera, you are not seeing the picture, remember, meaning, you had to remember what you've…

— David Hockney

I've no doubt that those photographs i took will make people look at everything in a more interesting way - the little…

— David Hockney

The video camera dominates art. It's a bore, it makes everything look a bit the same. If you look at things with…

— David Hockney

With chemical film, it was possible to alter photographs, but you had to be an expert. That's not true any more. The…

— David Hockney

You had to be aware that I saw that photography was a mere episode in the history of the optical projection and…

— David Hockney

Modernism in a way, early modernism, for instance, in pictures, was turning against perspective and Europe. And all early modernism is actually…

— David Hockney

I thought using three cameras was a lot better than one, because you could see where you were going, where you'd been,…

— David Hockney

Great claims are being made for the photograph as truth. We are showing you things, we show you the war. I say…

— David Hockney

The pictures on the walls aren't like movies. They don't move, they don't talk, and they'll last longer. They will last longer.

— David Hockney

Because I'm interested in depiction, representation, therefore you're interested in photography. You don't ignore it.

— David Hockney

I'm interested in all kinds of pictures, however they are made, with cameras, with paint brushes, with computers, with anything.

— David Hockney

You can't name the inventor of the camera. The 19th-century invention was chemical: the fixative.

— David Hockney

The camera can't see space. It sees surfaces. People see space, which is much more interesting.

— David Hockney

It's time to debate images, especially when someone's going to prison for downloading them.

— David Hockney

I've always said that the only thing a photograph is good at capturing faithfully is another flat surface.

— David Hockney

The picture itself is a document. How do you mean? We're looking at a document. It gives you clues.

— David Hockney

I'm really only interested in technology that is about pictures. I'm interested in anything that makes a picture.

— David Hockney

But slowly I began to use cameras and then think about what it was that was going on. It took me a…

— David Hockney

...all along I've had an ambivalent relationship to photography - but as to whether I thought it an art form, or a…

— David Hockney

Photography hankers after the condition of the neutral observer. But there can be no such things as a neutral observer. For something…

— David Hockney

But, I would always be thinking of how pictures are constructed and colour, how to use it, I mean you're using it…

— David Hockney