Berenice Abbott

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

— Berenice Abbott

The challenge for me has first been to see things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing…

— Berenice Abbott

To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it. The…

— Berenice Abbott

Self-conscious artiness is fatal, but it certainly would not hurt to study composition in general. Having a basic understanding of composition would…

— Berenice Abbott

To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it. The…

— Berenice Abbott

None. They should just go out and photograph and stop talking about it. That's the only way they are going to find…

— Berenice Abbott

What the human eye observes casually and incuriously, the eye of the camera... notes with relentless fidelity.

— Berenice Abbott

There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or…

— Berenice Abbott

Abstraction in photography is ridiculous, and is only an imitation of painting. We stopped imitating painters a hundred years ago, so to…

— Berenice Abbott

I have yet to see a fine photograph which is not a good document.

— Berenice Abbott

Like every other means of expression, photography, if it is to be utterly honest and direct, should be related to the life…

— Berenice Abbott

I wanted to combine science and photography in a sensible, unemotional way. Some people’s ideas of scientific photography is just arty design,…

— Berenice Abbott

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

— Berenice Abbott

What the human eye observes casually and incuriously, the eye of the camera (the lens) notes with relentless fidelity.

— Berenice Abbott

Let us first say what photography is not. A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. It is…

— Berenice Abbott

I believe there is no more creative medium than photography to recreate the living world of our time. Photography gladly accepts the…

— Berenice Abbott

I haven't seen too many images that have impressed me!

— Berenice Abbott

What the human eye observes causally and incuriously, the eye of the camera notes with relentless fidelity.

— Berenice Abbott

I'm not a nice girl; I'm a photographer. (On being told by a Federal Art Project official, after she photographed the Bowery,…

— Berenice Abbott

Suppose we took a thousand negatives... combining the elegances, the squalor, the curiosities, the monuments, the sad faces, the triumphant faces, the…

— Berenice Abbott

I think the important decision for a photographer is to choose a subject that intensely interests him or her.

— Berenice Abbott

If a medium is representational by nature of the realistic image formed by a lens, I see no reason why we should…

— Berenice Abbott

Actually, documentary pictures include every subject in the world - good, bad, indifferent. I have yet to see a fine photograph which…

— Berenice Abbott

Imagine a world without photography, one could only imagine.

— Berenice Abbott

The more you do, the more you realize there is to do, what a vast object the metropolis is, and how the…

— Berenice Abbott