But I do feel a little teeny right now that I'm just about ready to start and winter is entering. Half past autumn has arrived.
You have a 45mm automatic pistol on your lap and I have a 35mm camera on my lap and my weapon is just as powerful as yours. (To Black Panther militant Eldridge Cleaver)
I've been with Life now for seventeen years and I have written several articles for them and will be doing more writing and do at least two assignments a year besides my writing.
At first I wasn't sure that I had the talent but I did know I had a fear of failure and that fear compelled me to fight off anything that might abet it.
The camera could be a very powerful instrument against discrimination against poverty against racism.
I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty against racism against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.
The guy who takes a chance who walks the line between the known and unknown who is unafraid of failure will succeed.
And I think that after nearly 85 years upon this planet that I have a right after working so hard at showing the desolation and the poverty to show something beautiful for somebody as well.
Many times I wondered whether my achievement was worth the loneliness I experienced but now I realize the price was small.
I suffered evils but without allowing them to rob me of the freedom to expand.
I picked up a camera because it was my choice of weapons against what I hated most about the universe: racism intolerance poverty.
I bought my first camera in Seattle Washington. Only paid about seven dollars and fifty cents for it.
And now I feel at 85 I really feel that I'm just ready to start.
Enthusiasm is the electricity of life. How do you get it? You act enthusiastic until you make it a habit.
I have been born again and again and each time I have found something to love.
Use anger to emotionalize whatever thing you intend to do in life - being a painter a poet or a photographer
So I went to Chicago in 1940 I think '41 and the photographs that I made there aside from fashion were things that I was trying to express in a social conscious way.
You know the camera is not meant just to show misery.
Photography was my choice of weapons.
I have never known anyone important enough to consume me in anger beyond a few hours. Better to depart their existence before they poison your own.
Success can be wracking and reproachful to you and those close to you. It can entangle you with legends that are consuming and all but impossible to live up to.
I do find a certain fascination with the unpredictable. The transitory years we wade through are what they are- what we make of them.
Nothing came easy. I was just born with a need to explore every part of my mind. And with long searching and hard work I became devoted to my restlessness.
Washington D.C. in 1942 was not the easiest place in the world for a Negro to get along.
The man at Kodak told me the shots were very good and if I kept it up they would give me an exhibition. Later Kodak gave me my first exhibition.
Enthusiasm is the electricity of life
I have always felt as though I needed a weapon against evil.
I had known poverty firsthand but there I learned how to fight its evil - along with the evil of racism - with a camera.
Think in terms of images and words. They can be mighty powerful when they are fitted together properly.
If a man can reach the latter days of his life with his soul intact he has mastered life.
I think most people can do a whole lot more if they just try.
I suffered first as a child from discrimination poverty ... So I think it was a natural follow from that that I should use my camera to speak for people who are unable to speak for themselves.
The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer.
I feel it is the heart not the eye that should determine the content of the photograph. What the eye sees is its own. What the heart can perceive is a very different matter.
If you don't have anything to say your photographs aren't going to say much.
I think maybe the rural influence in my life helped me in a sense of knowing how to get close to people and talk to them and get my work done.