It is said that photographers have been capturing portraits of people since cameras were invented. But do you really know who are the most famous portrait photographers?

Are you inspired of this style of photography? If YES, I’ve picked up 15 amazingly talented photographers and their unforgettable shots also deeply touching words about life with camera.

Portrait photographer from Asia

Zhang Jingna “Beyond artistic expression and client requests, I just want to create something beautiful. That applies to all my work-fashion or otherwise.”

9 Photographers from America:

Annie Leibovitz: “I’ve never liked the word ‘celebrity.’ I like to photograph people who are good at what they do.”

Steve McCurry: “If you wait,” … “people will forget your camera and the soul will drift up into view.”

Alex Currie: “I started doing 365 portraiture, where you shoot a portrait of someone once every day [for one year]. Everything I shot had a person with a story or a concept or a set-up, but a lot of them wound up being my own self-portraits, a reflection of myself over the course of a year.”

Lisa Kristine: “The wonderful thing about photography is that it transcends language.”

Phil Borges: “Photography has been the key that has let me enter cultural worlds very different from my own.”

Petra Collins: “That’s what I look for in models: Someone who can tell a story and has a presence in front of the camera.”

Olivia Bee: “I shoot a lot of self portraits. And the self portraits have some kind of emotional arc behind them, and I try to make them about something that’s happened in my life.”

Joe McNally: ”I’ve said it thousands of times, but I will keep saying it: light is language, and it is a language that photographers must be fluent in. There is no life in a picture without the right light. Light and the resulting shadows and patterns give your subjects edge and definition. They establish the environment while adding volume and dimension. They breathe life into a photograph.”

David LaChapelle: “I believe in a visual language that should be as strong as the written word.”

5 Photographers from Europe:

Jimmy Nelsson: “The world is becoming homogenized, globalized and digitized. It’s becoming one. I actually encourage it. I encourage cross communication and fertilization of culture and understanding. They need you to go there to understand them. And you need to understand them to bring that message back here.”

Berta Vicente Salas: “I have the feeling of always being rehearsing. I practice and then I start creating. I want to experiment and then be sure of what I am doing. What I do, I do it guiding myself through my interests of the moment, and I am drawn to people. I love them. They are fascinating. I love how you can create a time of making a picture and understand what the person you are photographing is giving to you.”

David Uzochukwu: “I feel like even the slightest bit of dishonesty is tangible in a photograph.”

Réhahn: “I think good photography is when you can capture the soul, read a story in the eyes.”

Eric Lafforgue: “I was not really inspired by people when I started photography, as I was a little shy, but when I discovered it was the best way to make contacts, I quickly began to take more portraits than anything else. For me, portraits were all the same, but I have realised that you can show so much with the eyes, the attitude and the smiles, that it has become my favourite activity.”

If you would like to know more about portrait photpgraphy here is some books: