Imogen Cunningham Quotes

“I don't think there's any such thing as teaching people photography, other than influencing them a little. People have to be their own learners. They have to have a certain talent.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“I don't know what love means.”

— Imogen Cunningham

I don't love the world. I think Jupiter should have hit us.

— Imogen Cunningham

“Everybody who does anything for the public can be criticized. There's always someone who doesn't like it.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“A woman said to me when she first sat down, You're photographing the wrong side of my face. I said, Oh, is there one?”

— Imogen Cunningham

“I never stopped photographing. There were a couple of years when I didn't have a darkroom, but that didn't stop me from photographing.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“I was poor. When you're poor you work, and when you're rich you expect somebody to hand it to you. So I think being reasonably poor is very good for people.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“When I need names they drop out of my head; when I don't need them they drop back.”

— Imogen Cunningham

Anybody is influenced by where and how he lives.

— Imogen Cunningham

“When you do portraits professionally it's not a desire, it's for money.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“I don't talk about success. I don't know what it is. Wait until I'm dead.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“There are certain things you don't discuss with Ansel, especially if you don't agree.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“I told the students that whatever they did in class was for the wastebasket.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“I hate big models.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“I turn people into human beings by not making them into gods.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“I was invited to photograph Hollywood. They asked me what I would like to photograph. I said, Ugly men.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“I'd never kill myself for a man. I wouldn't do it for anybody.”

— Imogen Cunningham

It's silly to keep people alive who have a terrible disease.

— Imogen Cunningham

Some people say to me, Isn't it too bad that people discovered you so late? I never thought that.

— Imogen Cunningham

“When People magazine called me, I did the job on Ansel. I'm older than Ansel and he has to mind me.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“You see, I became kind of a drop-out in science after I came back to America.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“Oh, you ask me, what is the greatest torture of a person who does portraits for a living? I could fill several volumes with nice nasty stories. I don't know.”

— Imogen Cunningham

When people ask me silly questions about my private life, I just say, I don't discuss that.

— Imogen Cunningham

Get it out of your historic head.

— Imogen Cunningham

“I became kind of a drop-out in science after I came back to America. I wanted to photograph.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“I don't resent anything.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“I think San Francisco is the best place in the whole world for an easy life.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“I was brought up on art. My father thought I had a great hand at art and sent me to art school. But he did not want me to become a photographer.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“Which of my photographs is my favorite? The one I'm going to take tomorrow.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“I wasn't very ambitious. I think that's the solution. I just took things as they came. I wouldn't say I didn't have any problem, but I didn't care. I didn't think I was going to save the world by doing photography as some of these people do. I was just having a good time doing it, and so I still had a good time no matter what I had to photograph.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“The thing that's fascinating about portraiture is that nobody is alike.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“The formula for doing a good job in photography is to think like a poet.”

— Imogen Cunningham

None of us is born with the right face. It's a tough job being a portrait photographer.

— Imogen Cunningham

You know, a documentary is only interesting once in a while. If you look at a whole book of Dorothea [Lange]'s where she has row after row of people bending over and digging out carrots - that can be very tedious. And so it's only once in a while that something happens that is worth doing.

— Imogen Cunningham

There are too many people studying it [photography] now who are never going to make it. You can't give them a formula for making it. You have to have it in you first, you don't learn it. The seeing eye is the important thing.

— Imogen Cunningham

“I never divide photographers into creative and uncreative, I just call them photographers. Who is creative? How do you know who is creative or not?”

— Imogen Cunningham

“I just believe in working. I'm not one of those romantic explainers of my own individual point of view.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“Which is my best picture? The one I will do tomorrow.”

— Imogen Cunningham

“Suppose Cartier-Bresson asked the man who jumped the puddle to do it again
it never would have been the same. Start stealing!”

— Imogen Cunningham