Eve Arnold, OBE, Hon. FRPS (née Cohen; April 21, 1912 – January 4, 2012) was an American photojournalist. She joined Magnum Photos agency in 1951, and became a full member in 1957. Read full biography of Eve Arnold →
If you are careful with people, they will offer you part of themselves. That is the big secret.
It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.
If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given.
Recording sessions were stimulating to photograph, because everything was in motion: the subject, the musicians, the technicians and the... →
I don't see anybody as either ordinary or extraordinary. I see them simply as people in front of my lens.
What I have tried to do is involve the people I was photographing... if they were willing to give, I was willing to photograph.
If the chemistry is right between star and photographer and the geometry of the pictures pleases the star, often the two people end up with a... →
You should never reveal your true age.
I love the idea I can go off with a single camera and a few rolls of film unencumbered... I was not interested in the illusion of reality, I wanted... →
I have been poor and I wanted to document poverty; I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth; I was interested in politics and I wanted to... →
I realise that I had the best of serious picture journalism. There was an innocence in our approach, especially in the 1950s and 1960s when we... →
What do you hang on the walls of your mind?
I want the subject to be in control. Because they will give me something I couldn't possibly know about them.
Eve Arnold, OBE, Hon. FRPS (née Cohen; April 21, 1912 – January 4, 2012) was an American photojournalist. She joined Magnum Photos agency in 1951, and became a full member in 1957.