Imogen Cunningham

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

“I don't love the world. I think Jupiter should have hit us.”

“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?”

“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.”

“When you do portraits professionally it's not a desire, it's for money.”

“I don't resent anything.”

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