Sam Abell Photographer Quotations

Essentially what photography is is life lit up.

My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.

I was known as a 35-mm photographer with a view-camera mentality.

My dad had been an ardent amateur photographer, and he taught me to compose a photograph from the back to the front, and then populate the picture.

I wanted life to be episodic. I wanted to be a magazine photographer and I was willing to do what it took to become that.

It's more difficult now, to be a Geographic photographer, than it was when I came along. And it wasn't easy at that time.

My least favorite photographer to have would be myself. Someone who wanted a career at National Geographic. Because it's almost mathematically impossible to achieve that.

When assignments were over, photography continued. One of the primary reasons it did was that I wanted and needed to have fresh work. Also, it's very stimulating to be around non-professional photographers. They're the ones with the purest flame burning about their photography. I appreciate that.

I think that it's workshops, honestly, that have kept me keen about photography, and about my photography. My career as a workshop photographer came while I was at the Geographic in the late 70's, and has continued consistently since then.

I can't speak for other photographers, but the photographers who went forward strongly when the so-called "official" part of their career ended, to me, were those who had taught. Teaching enriches and enlivens one's work.

Yes, there are billions more photographers, and billions more photographs every day, but who's building up a point of view? Who's photographing with intention, and whose body of work will sustain itself and survive?

I now want to be a photographer of my time, and our common culture.

Typically I see it with photographers who go to a place like India or Nepal, and everything's so colorful and exotic and they think, therefore, a picture's been taken.

People say to me, "Who's your favorite kind of photographer?" Or "Who would be your favorite photographer to have in a workshop?" And I always say, "My Dad."