Quotes By Imogen Cunningham

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

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.

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

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 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.

Anybody is influenced by where and how he lives.

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

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

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

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.

Get it out of your historic head.

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 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 don't know what love means.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 hate big models.

I don't resent anything.

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

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

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

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

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

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?