Quotes by
Tim Mantoani

A camera, like a guitar, is just a box with a hole in it. Until it is placed in the hands of a true artist, it will not make a music, only noise.

The power of photograph, both in moving and still form, has greatly influenced the development and evolution of culture, and humans as a species.

Who knows what a photo taken today may come to represent in ten, twenty… perhaps fifty years. Photography represents fractions of seconds, preserved and then put away for minutes, hours, days, years or decades before they are shown again to bring these moments to life.

Photography happens in fractions of seconds. If you totaled the precise time it took to make every image in the book and combined them, it would only amount to a few seconds. In each image, in every frame, there is the moment when the photographer chose to record the image. It is not the camera that makes the picture, it is the photographer.

Photographers are collectors, every one of them. Some collect bits and pieces of various subjects while others become obsessed with only one. We should be thankful to these compulsive individuals who CAN NOT quit. It is through their obsession that history is archived, various stories are collected and told with their single voice running through them, preserved for those that follow.

Every one sees the world differently. Through their own lens. I’m lucky that mine happens to be attached to a camera. To me, that’s the most exciting and rewarding thing about photography and film. Capturing a vision that’s uniquely yours and sharing it.

I think for all of us, as you grow up, there are just certain images that linger. Images that recorded history and also helped define it.

Photography is not just a means of seeing the world, but a vehicle to understand ourselves. On individual and social levels, photography is a way of documenting our lives, capturing important moments, places, and experiences, and sharing those moments with others.

In the corporate world, photography is an integral component of commerce, advertising, and information transfer. Photography brings the world to us: art, architecture, fashion, nature, war, and far-off lands. Virtually every aspect of our daily lives is influenced by images and to such a degree that we rarely even think about it. Photography has become commonplace, expected.

When granted access, photographers often have a pass into worlds that few others see in person. It can be both blessing and a curse, as photographers have seen both the best and worst of humanity. For the viewer, it is a glimpse into a locked room, forgotten culture, the end zone, the horrors of war, the mind of an artist or the chance to study every detail of a famous face...

..Great photographers work on impulse, on their gut. They listen to that voice in the back of their head even when it is telling them to do something that common sense tells them not to.

In the natural world, there must be a balance; man, animals and mother Earth, sharing the same space. An image that can harness this balance can be extremely powerful: a perfect circle of barracuda, a bond between man and dog, an eagle hunter from an ancient world. And when the balance is disrupted, we too are drawn to see the evils with our own eyes. We can’t look, but we can’t look away.

As we become this digital society where we just consume images daily through Facebook and Twitter and email, I think the sense of where pictures come from has gone away. I think it’s important for people to realize that cameras didn’t make these pictures. People did.