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.

There’s another horizon out there, one more horizon that you have to make for yourself and let other people discover it, and someone else will take it further on, you know.

I bought my first camera in Seattle, Washington. Only paid about seven dollars and fifty cents for it.

The subject matter is so much more important than the photographer.

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.

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.

I was there less than a year before I was assigned to the Paris bureau. I spent two years there and, in fact, before I even went on the staff I was sent to Europe...

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.

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.

I suffered evils, but without allowing them to rob me of the freedom to expand.

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.

You know, the camera is not meant just to show misery.

I’d become sort of involved in things that were happening to people. No matter what color they be, whether they be Indians, or Negroes, the poor white person or anyone who was I thought more...

And now, I feel at 85, I really feel that I’m just ready to start.

People in millenniums ahead will know what we were like in the 1930’s and the thing that, the important major things that shaped our history at that time. This is as important for historic reasons...

The photographer begins to feel big and bloated and so big he can’t walk through one of these doors because he gets a good byline; he gets notices all over the world and so forth;...

Washington, D.C. in 1942 was not the easiest place in the world for a Negro to get along.

But I was very disappointed that I didn’t get a chance to go overseas with that group, might not have gotten back but I wanted very much to go because there’s not much of a...

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.