Top 50 Elliott Erwitt Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “To me, photography is about finding something interesting in an ordinary place. I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

— Elliott Erwitt

Featured in: Photography Quotes

2. “Color is descriptive. Black and white is interpretive.”

— Elliott Erwitt

3. “The whole point of taking pictures is so that you don’t have to explain things with words.”

— Elliott Erwitt

4. “I am serious about not being serious.”

— Elliott Erwitt

5. “Photography is pretty simple stuff. You just react to what you see, and take many, many pictures.”

— Elliott Erwitt

6. “If you keep your cool, you’ll get everything.”

— Elliott Erwitt

7. “I appreciate simplicity, true beauty that lasts over time, and a little wit and eclecticism that make life more fun.”

— Elliott Erwitt

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8. “Photography is an art of observation – it’s about creating something extraordinary out of the ordinary. You choose a frame and then wait until the right time for something magical to come along and fill it.”

— Elliott Erwitt

9. “The best things happen when you just happen to be somewhere with a camera.”

— Elliott Erwitt

10. “All the technique in the world doesn’t compensate for the inability to notice.”

— Elliott Erwitt

11. “Good photography is not about Zone Printing or any other Ansel Adams nonsense. It’s just about seeing. You either see or you don’t see. The rest is academic. Photography is simply a function of noticing things. Nothing more.”

— Elliott Erwitt

12. “It’s about time we started to take photography seriously and treat it as a hobby.”

— Elliott Erwitt

13. “When I get up in the morning I brush my teeth and go about my business, and if I am going anywhere interesting I take my camera along.”

— Elliott Erwitt

14. “Photography is simply a function of noticing things.”

— Elliott Erwitt

15. “Be sure to take the lens cap off before photographing.”

— Elliott Erwitt

16. “Do what the client wants, not what you want.”

— Elliott Erwitt

17. “I like things that have to do with what is real, elegant, well presented and without excessive style. In other words, just fine observation.”

— Elliott Erwitt

18. “I don’t really have a favorite camera. I use a Leica and Canon a lot. It depends, especially professionally, on the requirements. But my carry-around camera is a Leica.”

— Elliott Erwitt

19. “The work I care about is terribly simple. I observe. I try to entertain. But above all I want my pictures to be emotional. Little else interests me in photography.”

— Elliott Erwitt

20. “A visual sense is something you either have or you don’t.”

— Elliott Erwitt

21. “After following the crowd for a while, I’d then go 180 degrees in the exact opposite direction. It always worked for me.”

— Elliott Erwitt

22. “Dogs don’t mind being photographed in compromising situations.”

— Elliott Erwitt

23. “Something catches your eye, or your interest. You attack it in some way or observe it in some way, and try to put it in some kind of form and take a picture. It’s as simple as that.”

— Elliott Erwitt

24. “There’s no great mystique to photography. A lot of photographers like to put their hands up to their forehead and tell you how they’ve suffered and so forth. Well, I just rent a car and drive to the place and take the pictures.”

— Elliott Erwitt

25. “In those simpler days, you could just take pictures of movie stars and show them the way they were, as normal human beings. And if I felt part of any movement at the time, it was just to do that – to be journalistic and photograph what is, rather than what is made up.”

— Elliott Erwitt

26. “The thing is that when you don’t carry a camera, that’s when you see pictures in particular, or at least that’s when you think you see pictures in particular. When you do carry it, if you do see one on the occasion that you do, you can take it.”

— Elliott Erwitt

27. “Making people laugh is one of the highest achievements you can have. And when you can make someone laugh and cry, alternatively, as Chaplin does – now that’s the highest of all personal achievements. I don’t know that I aim for it, but I recognize it as the supreme goal.”

— Elliott Erwitt

28. “Photoshop is useful in many ways but must NEVER be used for the altering of photographs. My assistants and my agency do whatever Photoshop work for me that may be required as it is too complicated for my brain.”

— Elliott Erwitt

29. “Photography is an art of observation. It has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

— Elliott Erwitt

30. “It’s about reacting to what you see, hopefully without preconception. You can find pictures anywhere. It’s simply a matter of noticing things and organising them. You just have to care about what’s around you and have a concern with humanity and the human comedy.”

— Elliott Erwitt

31. “I like to think I keep my mind open. When I walk the streets I don’t look for anything in particular. I come from a philosophy that believes you shouldn’t have preconceived notions – that you don’t need a gimmick. That you should just photograph what you react to – what you see.”

— Elliott Erwitt

32. “Somehow Photoshop and the ease with which one can produce an image has degraded the quality of photography in general.”

— Elliott Erwitt

33. “Photography is a craft. Anyone can learn a craft with normal intelligence and application. To take it beyond the craft is something else. That’s when magic comes in. And I don’t know that there’s any explanation for that.”

— Elliott Erwitt

34. “If you’re not a curious person, you’re certainly not going to be a good photographer.”

— Elliott Erwitt

35. “I don’t like explosions. I don’t mind progress. But digital photography has made every man, woman, child and chimpanzee a photographer of sorts and consequently has numbed down the general quality of photographs.”

— Elliott Erwitt

36. “I’ve been around so long, most editors think I’m dead.”

— Elliott Erwitt

37. “I enjoy nothing more than spending time with my loved ones, young and old, and at least once a year we get together for a formal family photograph.”

— Elliott Erwitt

38. “I’m an amateur photographer, apart from being a professional one, and I think maybe my amateur pictures are the better ones.”

— Elliott Erwitt

39. “I’m not a serious photographer like many of my contemporaries. That is to say, I am serious about not being serious.”

— Elliott Erwitt

40. “I dislike landscapes. I only like people, and plastic flowers.”

— Elliott Erwitt

41. “Ill always be an amateur photographer.”

— Elliott Erwitt

42. “I see no difference between my pictures that people consider amusing and the rest. To me, it’s all serious work – they’re just a reaction to what I see. I don’t leave this apartment in the morning and say to myself ‘Today I’m going to be funny and tomorrow I’m going to be sad.’”

— Elliott Erwitt

43. “You have to devote yourself totally to be successful at it.”

— Elliott Erwitt

44. “As a professional photographer I take photographs for other people to see – but I want them to see what I see. So I never assume that only a few people will appreciate what I do. At all times, the public should be able to understand what I’ve done, even if they don’t understand how I’ve done it.”

— Elliott Erwitt

45. “You don’t study photography, you just do it.”

— Elliott Erwitt

46. “You can find pictures anywhere. It’s simply a matter of noticing things and organizing them.”

— Elliott Erwitt

47. “My ‘work’ is about seeing not about ideas.”

— Elliott Erwitt

48. “I am a professional photographer by trade and an amateur photographer by vocation.”

— Elliott Erwitt

49. “Working myself into a position of total versatility, so that I can do anything I want to do at the time I want to do it. Whether I do it or not is another question.”

— Elliott Erwitt

50. “I like museums in Berlin a lot, especially in the eastern part. They’re extraordinarily good.”

— Elliott Erwitt