To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. But when the great photographs are produced, it will be down that road. But I have only touched it, just touched it.

Migratory Cotton Picker, Eloy, Arizona, 1940 FSA Collection, Library of Congress

The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects. So that no one would say, how did you do it, where did you find it, but they would say that such things could be.

Migrant Mother, Nipomo, CA, 1936 FSA Collection, Library of Congress

That's the first day I ever made a photograph actually on the street. I put it on the wall of my studio and customers, people whom I was making portraits of would come in and glance at them. And the only comment I ever got was, "What are you going to do with this kind of thing? I didn't know. But I knew that picture was on my wall, and I knew that it was worth doing."

White Angel Breadline, San Francisco, Ca. 1933 Oakland Museum Collection

Tom Collins was unknown, but he got the job of managing one of these government established camps for migratory workers. And John Steinbeck somehow or other encountered him, and Tom Collins is a big figure in the book! Tom is that camp manager in The Grapes of Wrath!

Grapes of Wrath, Ca. 1940 FSA Collection, Library of Congress

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The billboards that were up at the time I photographed. Savage, savage billboards. This is what we did. How did it happen? How could we?

Richmond, California, 1942 FSA Collection, Library of Congress

The best way to go into an unknown territory is to go in ignorant, ignorant as possible, with your mind wide open, as wide open as possible and not having to meet anyone else's requirement but my own.

Pathan Warrior Tribesman, Khyber Pass, 1958 Oakland Museum Collection

I would rather welcome, in this show, a statement which says that:

"One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind."

© Imogen Cunnigham Trust

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