Joseph Nicéphore Niépce
[One of the originators of photography, b. 1765, Chalon-sur-Saône, France, d. 1833, Gras, France.]

 The discovery I have made and which I call Heliography, consists in reproducing spontaneously, by the action of light, with gradations of tints from black to white, the images received in the camera obscura. 

James Nachtwey
[Photographer, b. 1948, Syracuse, New York, lives in New York.]

 I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated. 

Helmut Newton
[Photographer, b. 1920, Berlin, d. 2004, Los Angeles.]

 Look, I’m not an intellectual—I just take pictures. 

Arnold Newman
[Photographer, b. 1918, New York, d. 2006, New York.]

 Photography, as we all know, is not real at all. It is an illusion of reality with which we create our own private world. 

Laurel Nakadate
[Video artist and photographer, b. 1975, Austin, Texas, lives in New York.]

 Although I get a lot of ideas from things that have happened in my life, I see the final product as a place where my imagination meets my experience. What I love about photography is that nothing is really as it seems. 

Shirin Neshat
[Artist, photographer, and filmmaker, b. 1957, Qazvin, Iran, lives in New York.]

 Beautiful woman wrapped in chadors, with huge machine guns in their hands. Brilliant, shocking, amazingly contradictory images. They compelled me to deeply investigate these ideas. 

Graham Nash
[Musician, photographer, and collector, b. 1942, Blackpool, Lancashire, England, lives in Encino, California.]

 I don’t shoot kittens with balls of wool. I don’t shoot sunsets. What draws me? Ironic, surreal, unexplained, timely moments. 

Charles Nègre
[Photographer, b. 1820, Grasse, France, d. 1880, Cannes, France.]

 Photography does not form a separate, barren field of art. It is only a means of execution, uniform, rapid and sure, which serves the artist by reproducing with mathematical precision the form and effect of objects and even that poetry which at once arises from any harmonious combination.