Photography should have the courage to present itself as what it is, which is a graphic composition produced by a machine and an eye and then some chemicals and paper. Technically, it has nothing to do with painting. 

 I am stalking, as in the hunt. What a bagful to be taken home. (On his “subway series.”) 

 When the point of a picture subject is precisely its vulgarity or its color-accident through man’s hand, not God’s, then only can color film be used validly. (1969) 

 After all, I am getting older, and I feel that nobody should touch a Polaroid until he’s over sixty. (On his experiments with the new SX-70 camera, 1974) 

 I think what I am doing is valid and worth doing, and I use the word transcendent. That’s very pretentious, but if I’m satisfied that something transcendent shows in a photograph I’ve done, that’s it. It’s there, I’ve done it. Without being able to explain, I know it absolutely, that it happens sometimes, and I know by the way I feel in the action that it goes like magic—this is it. It’s as though there’s a wonderful secret in a certain place and I can capture it. Only I can do it at this moment, only this moment and only me. That’s a hell of a thing to believe, but I believe it or I couldn’t act. 

 You’ve got to collect. This is a piece of the anatomy of somebody’s living... 

 I don’t think very much about [composition] consciously, but I’m very aware of it unconsciously, instinctively. Deliberately discard it every once in a while not to be artistic. Composition is a schoolteacher’s word. Any artist composes. I prefer to compose originally, naturally rather than self-consciously. Form and composition both are terribly important. 

 Color tends to corrupt photography and absolute color corrupts it absolutely. Consider the way color film usually renders blue sky, green foliage, lipstick red, and the kiddies’ playsuit. These are four simple words which must be whispered: color photography is vulgar.