Annie Leibovitz

I fell in love with the darkroom, and that was part of being a photographer at the time. The darkroom was unbelievably sexy. I would spend all night in the darkroom.

I went to Yosemite as an homage to Ansel Adams. I could never be Ansel Adams, but to know that's there for us - there's so much for us in this country.

As I get older, the book projects are - liberating is one word, but they really are me.

When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't true. What became important was to have a point of view.

As much as I'm not a journalist, I use journalism. And when you photograph a relationship, it's quite wonderful to let something unfold in front of you.

Those who want to be serious photographers, you're really going to have to edit your work. You're going to have to understand what you're doing. You're going to have to not just shoot, shoot, shoot. To stop and look at your work is the most important thing you can do.

I realized I couldn't be a journalist because I like to take a side, to have an opinion and a point a view; I liked to step across the imaginary boundary of the objective view that the journalist is supposed to have and be involved.

I personally made a decision many years ago that I wanted to crawl into portraiture because it had a lot of latitude.

I'm a huge, huge fan of photography. I have a small photography collection. As soon as I started to make some money, I bought my very first photograph: an Henri Cartier-Bresson. Then I bought a Robert Frank.

As a young person, and I know it's hard to believe that I was shy, but you could take your camera, and it would take you to places: it was like having a friend, like having someone to go out with and look at the world. I would do things with a camera I wouldn't do normally if I was just by myself.

I've never liked the word 'celebrity.' I like to photograph people who are good at what they do.

I went to school at the San Francisco Art Institute, thinking I was going to become an art teacher. Within the first six months I was there, I was told that I couldn't be an art teacher unless I became an artist first.

I admired the work of photographers like Beaton, Penn, and Avedon as much as I respected the grittier photographers such as Robert Frank. But in the same way that I had to find my own way of reportage, I had to find my own form of glamour.

I'm more interested in being good than being famous.

I sometimes find the surface interesting. To say that the mark of a good portrait is whether you get them or get the soul - I don't think this is possible all of the time.

If it makes you cry, it goes in the show.

I'd like to think that the actions we take today will allow others in the future to discover the wonders of landscapes we helped protect but never had the chance to enjoy ourselves.

There are still so many places on our planet that remain unexplored. I'd love to one day peel back the mystery and understand them.

My hope is that we continue to nurture the places that we love, but that we also look outside our immediate worlds.

I feel a responsibility to my backyard. I want it to be taken care of and protected.

I was with Tom Wolfe at the launch of Apollo 17, which led him to 'The Right Stuff.'

I feel unbelievably blessed that I have had the opportunity to photograph Malala in her classroom in Birmingham.

As soon as you put something to bed like the 'Women' book, you're never finished. There were portraits of people that I wanted to photograph - it's an endless subject.

One of the great things about being an older person is that I am very aware of the scope of the work and the historical sense of it. It's bigger than me.

My body was so instrumental to how I took pictures: it was practically a dance. I used to use my legs a lot; now I'm a little more sedentary.

There's not enough talked about in terms of growing older. You start to lose your body.

I feel more like a creative artist using photography because there's - the digital work is so interesting now. It's come to that. I have had many different stages of photography - there are many different ways to take photos. But I feel now I'm in that stage of my life where I use the camera, you know, in that way.

I went on tour with the Rolling Stones in 1972 for two or three cities. And in 1975, I was the tour photographer for the Rolling Stones. I hung onto my camera for dear life. Because it scared the hell out of me.

I love photography. And I just eat it up. I feel like I'm an encyclopedia, you know, inside.

I was scared when I went to Conde Nast. I had heard horror stories about how they used you up and then spit you out and went on. But there was this great history of photography that had been done there.

Lennon was very helpful. What he taught me seems completely obvious: he expected people to treat each other well.

I don't think I could give advice to my younger self because she probably wouldn't listen.

I try to be home for dinner, but I'm not there enough. I sometimes feel I'm still fumbling, getting it wrong, but I make my way.

As fantastic as it is to have 'Vogue' and 'Vanity Fair' as places to work, I don't often get to shoot the kind of things I like to photograph in the way I like to photograph.

I can't stand the word 'celebrity.' It's such a brash word.

There certainly are people who are a pain to work with. I'd be crazy to name them. You can't be indiscreet in this business.

I fight to take a good photograph every single time.

There were some advantages to being a woman photographer. I think women have more empathy with the subject.

What has stayed true all the way through my work is my composition, I hope, and my sense of color.

I've learned to create a palette, a vocabulary of ways to take pictures.

My father was stationed at Clark Air Base in the Philippines, which had a hospital where they brought casualties straight from the battlefield. My mother was kind of a sophisticated bohemian, and my father was in the military to make a living.

It's a heavy weight, the camera. Now we have modern and lightweight, small plastic cameras, but in the '70s they were heavy metal.

The camera makes you forget you're there. It's not like you are hiding but you forget, you are just looking so much.

When you are younger, the camera is like a friend and you can go places and feel like you're with someone, like you have a companion.

It's hard to watch something go on and be talking at the same time.

There must be a reason why photographers are not very good at verbal communication. I think we get lazy.

What I am interested in now is the landscape. Pictures without people. I wouldn't be surprised if eventually there are no people in my pictures. It is so emotional.

Sometimes I enjoy just photographing the surface because I think it can be as revealing as going to the heart of the matter.

In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view and to be conceptual with a picture. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative.

When I say I want to photograph someone, what it really means is that I'd like to know them. Anyone I know I photograph.