Top 70 Annie Leibovitz Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.”

— Annie Leibovitz

2. “You have trust in what you think. If you splinter yourself and try to please everyone, you can’t. It’s important to stay the course. I don’t think I would have lasted this long if I’d listened to anyone. You have to listen somewhat and then put that to the side and know that what you do matters.”

— Annie Leibovitz

3. “You have trust in what you think. If you splinter yourself and try to please everyone, you can’t.”

— Annie Leibovitz

4. “In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view. The image may not be literally what’s going on, but it’s representative.”

— Annie Leibovitz

5. “Nature is so powerful, so strong. It takes you to a place within yourself.”

— Annie Leibovitz

6. “You don’t have to sort of enhance reality. There is nothing stranger than truth.”

— Annie Leibovitz

7. “One doesn’t stop seeing. One doesn’t stop framing. It doesn’t turn off and turn on. It’s on all the time.”

— Annie Leibovitz

8. “A photograph is just a little, teeny-weeny, small piece of life. I feel like I see so much more than what I can actually get.”

— Annie Leibovitz

9. “Everyone has a point of view. Some people call it style, but what we’re really talking about is the guts of a photograph. When you trust your point of view, that’s when you start taking pictures.”

— Annie Leibovitz

10. “I wish that all of nature’s magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed.”

— Annie Leibovitz

11. “Computer photography won’t be photography as we know it. I think photography will always be chemical.”

— Annie Leibovitz

12. “When I’m asked about my work, I try to explain that there is no mystery involved. It is work. But things happen all the time that are unexpected, uncontrolled, unexplainable, even magical. The work prepares you for that moment. Suddenly the clouds roll in and the soft light you longed for appears.”

— Annie Leibovitz

13. “Things happen in front of you. That’s perhaps the most wonderful and mysterious aspect of photography.”

— Annie Leibovitz

14. “When I was younger I did things with a camera I would not do by myself. I went down to the docks in San Francisco and asked a fisherman if he would take me out on his boat. I would never do that without a camera.”

— Annie Leibovitz

15. “What I end up shooting is the situation. I shoot the composition and my subject is going to help the composition or not.”

— Annie Leibovitz

16. “When you go to take someone’s picture, the first thing they say is, what you want me to do? Everyone is very awkward.”

— Annie Leibovitz

17. “There is a myth that the portrait photographer is supposed to make the subject relax, and that’s the real person. But I’m interested in whatever is going on. And I’m not that comfortable myself.”

— Annie Leibovitz

18. “A photograph is just a tiny slice of a subject. A piece of them in a moment. It seems presumptuous to think you can get more than that.”

— Annie Leibovitz

19. “The camera makes you forget you’re there. It’s not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.”

— Annie Leibovitz

20. “All dancers are, by and large, a photographer’s dream. They communicate with their bodies and they are trained to be completely responsive to a collaborative situation.”

— Annie Leibovitz

21. “In this day and age of things moving so, so fast, we still long for things to stop, and we as a society love the still image. Every time there is some terrible or great moment, we remember the stills.”

— Annie Leibovitz

22. “My lens of choice was always the 35 mm. It was more environmental. You can’t come in closer with the 35 mm.”

— Annie Leibovitz

23. “I don’t think there is anything wrong with white space. I don’t think it’s a problem to have a blank wall.”

— Annie Leibovitz

24. “What I am interested in now is the landscape. Pictures without people. I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually there are no people in my pictures. It is so emotional.”

— Annie Leibovitz

25. “A very subtle difference can make the picture or not.”

— Annie Leibovitz

26. “I’m pretty used to people not liking having their picture taken. I mean, if you do like to have your picture taken, I worry about you.”

— Annie Leibovitz

27. “If I didn’t have my camera to remind me constantly, I am here to do this, I would eventually have slipped away, I think. I would have forgotten my reason to exist.”

— Annie Leibovitz

28. “As a young person, and I know it’s hard to believe that I was shy, but you could take your camera, and it would take you to places: it was like having a friend, like having someone to go out with and look at the world. I would do things with a camera I wouldn’t do normally if I was just by myself.”

— Annie Leibovitz

29. “The subjects felt more comfortable if they played the role than if they had to be themselves.”

— Annie Leibovitz

30. “If it makes you cry, it goes in the show.”

— Annie Leibovitz

31. “Irving Penn said he didn’t want to photograph anyone under 60, and I think there is some truth about it.”

— Annie Leibovitz

32. “I was scared to do anything in the studio because it felt so claustrophobic. I wanted to be somewhere where things could happen and the subject wasn’t just looking back at you.”

— Annie Leibovitz

33. “When you are on assignment, film is the least expensive thing in a very practical sense. Your time, the person’s time, turns out to be the most valuable thing.”

— Annie Leibovitz

34. “I fight to take a good photograph every single time.”

— Annie Leibovitz

35. “My early childhood equipped me really well for my portrait work: The quick encounter, where you are not going to know the subject for very long. These days I am much more comfortable with the fifteen minute relationship, than I am with a life long relationship.”

— Annie Leibovitz

36. “It’s hard to watch something go on and be talking at the same time.”

— Annie Leibovitz

37. “The work which is manipulated looks a little boring to me. I think life is pretty strange anyway. It is wooo, wooo, wooo!”

— Annie Leibovitz

38. “What I learned from Lennon was something that did stay with me my whole career, which is to be very straightforward. I actually love talking about taking pictures, and I think that helps everyone.”

— Annie Leibovitz

39. “I love having the photograph in my hand. I love looking at the photograph. I love looking at a box of photographs. I just love the still photograph.”

— Annie Leibovitz

40. “I’d like to think that the actions we take today will allow others in the future to discover the wonders of landscapes we helped protect but never had the chance to enjoy ourselves.”

— Annie Leibovitz

41. “When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I’d like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph.”

— Annie Leibovitz

42. “I’m more interested in being good than being famous.”

— Annie Leibovitz

43. “People buy ideas, they don’t buy photographs.”

— Annie Leibovitz

44. “When I take a picture I take 10 percent of what I see.”

— Annie Leibovitz

45. “When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that’s what I was doing, but it wasn’t.”

— Annie Leibovitz

46. “A lot can be told from what happens in between the main moments.”

— Annie Leibovitz

47. “The pictures of my family were designed to be on a family wall, they were supposed to be together. It was supposed to copy my mother’s wall in her house.”

— Annie Leibovitz

48. “I didn’t want to let women down. One of the stereotypes I see breaking is the idea of aging and older women not being beautiful.”

— Annie Leibovitz

49. “I sometimes find the surface interesting. To say that the mark of a good portrait is whether you get them or get the soul – I don’t think this is possible all of the time.”

— Annie Leibovitz

50. “Everyone keeps asking you for pictures, and after a while you get tired of that. I always say, They are in the archives.”

— Annie Leibovitz