The photographer must bear the responsibility for his work and its effect …[for] photographic journalism, because of its tremendous audience reached by publications using it, has more influence on public thinking than any other branch of photography.

W. Eugene Smith

Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness.

W. Eugene Smith

groups voice photography

Never have I found the limits of the photographic potential. Every horizon, upon being reached, reveals another beckoning in the distance. Always, I am on the threshold.

W. Eugene Smith

umpires distance photography

Hardening of the categories causes art disease.

W. Eugene Smith

disease causes art

The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera.

W. Eugene Smith

cameras photography travel

Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors.

W. Eugene Smith

passion attitude peace

I didn’t write the rules. Why would I follow them?

W. Eugene Smith

photographer writing

What use having a great depth of field, if there is not an adequate depth of feeling?

W. Eugene Smith

depth use feelings

If I can get them to think, get them to feel, get them to see, then I've done about all that I can as a teacher.

W. Eugene Smith

teaching teacher thinking

I try to take what voice I have and I give it to those who don’t have one at all.

W. Eugene Smith

voice trying giving

The journalistic photographer can have no other than a personal approach; and it is impossible for him to be completely objective. Honest—yes. Objective—no.

W. Eugene Smith

honest photographer impossible

My photographs at best hold only a small length, but through them I would suggest and criticize and illuminate and try to give compassionate understanding.

W. Eugene Smith

understanding trying giving

I can’t stand these damn shows on museum walls with neat little frames, where you look at the images as if they were pieces of art. I want them to be pieces of life!

W. Eugene Smith

wall museums art

...and each time I pressed the shutter release it was a shouted condemnation hurled with the hope that the picture might survive through the years, with the hope that they might echo through the minds of men in the future - causing them caution and remembrance and realization.

W. Eugene Smith

echoes men years

In music I still prefer the minor key, and in printing I like the light coming from the dark. I like pictures that surmount the darkness, and many of my photographs are that way. It is the way I see photographically. For practical reasons, I think it looks better in print too.

W. Eugene Smith

keys dark thinking

Available light is any damn light that is available!

W. Eugene Smith

light photography photographer

I think photojournalism is documentary photography with a purpose.

W. Eugene Smith

photography purpose thinking

Negatives are the notebooks, the jottings, the false starts, the whims, the poor drafts, and the good draft but never the completed version of the work The print and a proper one is the only completed photograph, whether it is specifically shaded for reproduction, or for a museum wall.

W. Eugene Smith

wall notebook museums

I am constantly torn between the attitude of the conscientious journalist who is a recorder and interpreter of the facts and of the creative artist who often is necessarily at poetic odds with the literal facts.

W. Eugene Smith

odds artist attitude

I've never made any picture, good or bad, without paying for it in emotional turmoil.

W. Eugene Smith

emotional photography made

My camera, my intentions stopped no man from falling. Nor did they aid him after he had fallen. It could be said that photographs be damned for they bind no wounds. Yet, I reasoned, if my photographs could cause compassionate horror within the viewer, they might also prod the conscience of that viewer into taking action.

W. Eugene Smith

might men fall