Nadar

“Nor can you be taught how to grasp the personality of the sitter. That is a matter of tact, and of intuition.”

“But the portrait I am after is a likeness, not a caricature.”

“In photography, as in all things, there are people who can see and others who cannot even look.”

“What can be learned in a day is how to be a photographer. What can be learned in a lifetime is how to be an artist.”

“Everything is an idea. The more you search for it, the more you find it.”

“The theory of photography can be taught in an hour, the basics in a day. But what can't be taught is the feeling for light... It is how light lies on the face that you as artist must capture.”

“Photography is a marvelous discovery, a science that has attracted the greatest intellects, an art that has excited the most astute minds—and one that can be practiced by any imbecile.”