W. Eugene Smith
[Photographer, b. 1918, Wichita, Kansas, d. 1978, Tucson, Arizona.]
Never have I found the limits of the photographic potential. Every horizon, upon being reached, reveals another beckoning in the distance. Always, I am on the threshold.
... and each time I pressed the shutter release it was a shouted condemnation hurled with the hope that the picture might survive through the years, with the hope that they might echo through the minds of men in the future—causing them caution and remembrance and realization.
I think photojournalism is documentary photography with a purpose.
[I am] always torn between the attitude of the journalist, who is a recorder of facts, and the artist, who is often necessarily at odds with the facts.
Since I am somewhat adequate as a photographer, I remain with it.
(1956)
Available light is any damn light that is available!
I will do no photography... that compromises my intelligence, my taste, my integrity.
(On his dissatisfaction with working for LIFE Magazine, in a letter to Walker Evans, 1954)
I think the only thing wrong with the word “documentary” is that it can give some people the idea that you can make absolutely dull pictures of the ingredients of something instead of the heart of something.
