Annie Leibovitz's Quotes

I've created a vocabulary of different styles. I draw from many different ways to take a picture. Sometimes I go back to reportage, to journalism.

If it makes you cry, it goes in the show.

It's hard to watch something go on and be talking at the same time.

Lennon was very helpful. What he taught me seems completely obvious: he expected people to treat each other well.

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

No one ever thought Clint Eastwood was funny, but he was.

There must be a reason why photographers are not very good at verbal communication. I think we get lazy.

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

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.

When I take a picture I take 10 percent of what I see.

When you are younger, the camera is like a friend and you can go places and feel like you're with someone, like you have a companion.

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

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.

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.

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.

I admired the work of photographers like Beaton, Penn, and Avedon as much as I respected the grittier photographers such as Robert Frank. But in the same way that I had to find my own way of reportage, I had to find my own form of glamour.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy - your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself.

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.

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.

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

Computer photography won't be photography as we know it. I think photography will always be chemical.