I am only stimulated by people, never by ideas, almost never.

It is always an emotional response.

It is always between myself and myself and another person

– this is what it boils down to.

I am not interested in the technique of photography or of camera.

I am not interested in light. What I want is light in which the subject

is free to move in any way without falling into an ugly light.

So that I can get to them, to the expression they make, so that

they are free to do or express something which is the way I feel.

The camera is most in the way.

If I could do what I want with my eyes alone, I would be happy.

Then when I get it on paper, on the negative, if there was something

in the eyes when I took the picture, then when I look at the print,

there are things that I can do to emphasize that.

But when I’m used to an approach,it becomes like a person

that I have no response to.

The approach to the print is like the approach to the sitter.

Certain qualities in the print say what I mean.

I hate photographs, most photographs. I cannot take a picture

of something I have not known and experienced myself,

because I do not know what is going on.

The photograph is not reportage.

I do not believe that something reports itself in a photograph.

It is redrawn; it is something I am saying.

- Richard Avedon