Quotes by Dorothea Lange

“Souvenirs are perishable; fortunately, memories are not”

“Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion... the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate.”

“While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.”

“Hands off! I do not molest what I photograph, I do not meddle and I do not arrange.”

“This benefit of seeing... can come only if you pause a while, extricate yourself from the maddening mob of quick impressions ceaselessly battering our lives, and look thoughtfully at a quiet image... the viewer must be willing to pause, to look again, to meditate.”

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.

It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.

That frame of mind that you need to make fine pictures of a very wonderful subject, you cannot do it by not being lost yourself.

Being disabled gave me an immense advantage. People are kinder to you. It puts you on a different level than if you go into a situation whole and secure.

A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera.

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.

I many times encountered courage, real courage. Undeniable courage. Ive heard it said that that was the highest quality of the human animal. I encountered that many times, in unexpected places. And I have learned to recognize it when I see it.