Eve Arnold Quotations

What do you hang on the walls of your mind?

If you are careful with people, they will offer you part of themselves. That is the big secret.

If the chemistry is right between star and photographer and the geometry of the pictures pleases the star, often the two people end up with a long-term professional friendship during which they continue to work together and to produce highly personal images.

If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.

I don't see anybody as either ordinary or extraordinary. I see them simply as people in front of my lens.

It's hard for me to assess what I brought because each time you pick up a camera and point it at a person, you're trying to define that person so to talk generally is difficult because I have to think of a given image in order to conjure up what we're talking about.

What has changed is that when I photographed, most people that I photographed didn't have the right of refusal on their work. It would take a Marilyn Monroe at her height to be able to dictate that.

I love the idea I can go off with a single camera and a few rolls of film unencumbered... I was not interested in the illusion of reality, I wanted to get close to what was happening.

Lesson number one: Pay attention to the intrusion of the camera.

What you need to be a good photographer is an overwhelming curiosity and a good digestion.

Recording sessions were stimulating to photograph, because everything was in motion: the subject, the musicians, the technicians and the photographer. You needed fast reflexes to keep up with moving targets, and sensitivity and skill to get the pictures while keeping out of the performers' eyeline so as not to break their concentration.

What drove me and kept me going over the decades? If I had to use a single word, it would be 'curiosity.

I want the subject to be in control. Because they will give me something I couldn't possibly know about them.

Themes recur again and again in my work.

What I have tried to do is involve the people I was photographing... if they were willing to give, I was willing to photograph.

I find going back through things sometimes exhilarating because I find things I didn't know I had, and sometimes it's very off putting because there are things I never quite finished, and there's nothing at all to do about it now.

I have been poor and I wanted to document poverty; I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth; I was interested in politics and I wanted to know how it affected our lives; I am a woman and I wanted to know about women.

I realise that I had the best of serious picture journalism. There was an innocence in our approach, especially in the 1950s and 1960s when we naively believed that by holding a mirror up to the world we could help - no matter how little - to make people aware of the human condition.

I realize that I had the best of serious picture journalism.

It doesn't matter if you use a box camera or you use a Leica; the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing.

...if you think of modern art like sex in all its forms - heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, multipartnered, bestial, whatever, with absolutely no holds barred and with everything available and permissible - that would be modern art.

Being a woman is just a marvelous plus in photographing. Men like to be photographed by women, it becomes flirtatious and fun, and women feel less as if they're expected to be in a relationship.

I had in mind a long career.

I can't hold a camera anymore.

I came to photography by accident.

It's the hardest thing in the world to take the mundane and try to show how special it is.

A studio session ... provides the greatest chance for control. Even though there is total freedom, I still dislike studio photography and the contrived images that usually stem from this genre.

You should never reveal your true age.

I look for a sense of reality with everything I did. I didn't work in a studio, I didn't light anything. I found a way of working which pleased me because I didn't have to frighten people with heavy equipment. It was that little black box and me and £5 worth of film in my pocket or maybe it was only £2 in those days.

I think if I ever get satisfied, I’ll have to stop. It’s the frustration that drives you.

You can't make a great musician or a great photographer if the magic isn't there.

I didn't want to be a woman photographer. That would limit me. I wanted to be a photographer who was a woman, with all the world open to my camera.

The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.

It doesn’t matter if you use a box camera or a Leica, the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing. What I have tried to do is involve the people I was photographing. To have them realize without saying so, that it was up to them to give me whatever they wanted to give me . . . if they were willing to give, I was willing to photograph.

I found a way of working which pleased me because I didn’t have to frighten people with heavy equipment. It was that little black box and me.

If the photographer is interested in the people in front of his lens, and if he is compassionate, it's already a lot. The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.

I never knew anyone who came close to Marilyn in natural ability to use both photographer and still camera. She was special in this, and for me there has been no one like her before or after. She has remained the measuring rod by which I have - unconsciously - judged other subjects.