Quotes By Annie Leibovitz

You don't have to sort of enhance reality. There is nothing stranger than truth.

The pictures of my family were designed to be on a family wall, they were supposed to be together. It was supposed to copy my mother's wall in her house.

What I am interested in now is the landscape. Pictures without people. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually there are no people in my pictures. It is so emotional.

When you go to take someone's picture, the first thing they say is, what you want me to do? Everyone is very awkward.

When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't.

It's a heavy weight, the camera. Now we have modern and lightweight, small plastic cameras, but in the '70s they were heavy metal.

When I take a picture I take 10 percent of what I see.

When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I'd like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph.

Coming tight was boring to me, just the face... it didn't have enough information.

A very subtle difference can make the picture or not.

At my Rolling Stones' tour, the camera was a protection. I used it in a Zen way.

There must be a reason why photographers are not very good at verbal communication. I think we get lazy.

I was scared to do anything in the studio because it felt so claustrophobic. I wanted to be somewhere where things could happen and the subject wasn't just looking back at you.

There are still so many places on our planet that remain unexplored. I'd love to one day peel back the mystery and understand them.

I feel a responsibility to my backyard. I want it to be taken care of and protected.

No one ever thought Clint Eastwood was funny, but he was.

I didn't want to let women down. One of the stereotypes I see breaking is the idea of aging and older women not being beautiful.

My hope is that we continue to nurture the places that we love, but that we also look outside our immediate worlds.

I sometimes find the surface interesting. To say that the mark of a good portrait is whether you get them or get the soul - I don't think this is possible all of the time.

I feel very proud of the work from the '80s because it is very bright and colorful.

I am impressed with what happens when someone stays in the same place and you took the same picture over and over and it would be different, every single frame.

I admired the work of photographers like Beaton, Penn, and Avedon as much as I respected the grittier photographers such as Robert Frank. But in the same way that I had to find my own way of reportage, I had to find my own form of glamour.

I shoot a little bit, maybe two rolls, medium format, which is 20 pictures, and if it's not working, I change the position.

If it makes you cry, it goes in the show.

Computer photography won't be photography as we know it. I think photography will always be chemical.

I'm more interested in being good than being famous.

It's hard to watch something go on and be talking at the same time.

When you are on assignment, film is the least expensive thing in a very practical sense. Your time, the person's time, turns out to be the most valuable thing.

I still need the camera because it is the only reason anyone is talking to me.

I wish that all of nature's magnificence, the emotion of the land, the living energy of place could be photographed.