Imogen Cunningham

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

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

I don’t talk about success. I don’t know what it is. Wait until I’m dead.

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?

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

I don’t know what love means.

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.

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

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

When you do portraits professionally it’s not a desire, it’s for money.

Anybody is influenced by where and how he lives.

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

I hate big models.

I’d never kill myself for a man. I wouldn’t do it for anybody.

My mind is vacant on names, but I know him as well as anything. When I need names they drop out of my head; when I don’t need them they drop back.

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

There are certain things you don’t discuss with Ansel, especially if you don’t agree.

Well, I turn people into human beings by not making them into gods.

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.

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

I don’t resent anything.

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

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.

Get it out of your historic head.