Richard Avedon

“Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me.”

“Just advertising departments with legs and high heels.”

“People, unprotected by their roles, become isolated in beauty and intellect and illness and confusion.”

“My portraits are more about me than they are about the people I photograph.”

“Anything is an art if you do it at the level of an art.”

“People - running from unhappiness, hiding in power - are locked within their reputations, ambitions, beliefs.”

“I hate cameras. They interfere, they're always in the way. I wish: if I could work with my eyes alone.”

“Any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.”

“My parents put the New Yorker in my crib. I saw Vogue and Vanity Fair around the house before I could read.”

“The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion.”

“I can see myself as a very old man in a terrific wheelchair. Only, I won't be photographing the tree outside my window, the way Steichen did. I'll be photographing other old people.”

“Camera lies all the time. It's all it does is lie, because when you choose this moment instead of this moment, when you... the moment you've made a choice, you're lying about something larger. 'Lying' is an ugly word. I don't mean lying. But any artist picks and chooses what they want to paint or write about or say. Photographers are the same.”

“A photographic portrait is a picture of someone who knows he is being photographed, and what he does with this knowledge is as much a part of the photograph as what he's wearing or how he looks.”

“I think all art is about control - the encounter between control and the uncontrollable.”

“All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”

“I never wanted to be called an artist. I wanted to be called a photographer.”

“What ends up in your scrapbook? The pictures where you look like a good guy and a good family man, and the children look adorable - and they're screaming the next minute. I've never seen a family album of screaming people.”

“How many pictures have you torn up because you hate them? What ends up in your scrapbook? The pictures where you look like a good guy and a good family man, and the children look adorable - and they're screaming the next minute. I've never seen a family album of screaming people.”

“A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.”

“I've photographed just about everyone in the world. But what I hope to do is photograph people of accomplishment, not celebrity, and help define the difference once again.”