Act or lose

Within every man and woman a secret is hid­den, and as a pho­to­grapher it is my task to reve­al it if I can. The reve­la­ti­on, if it comes at all, will come in a small frac­tion of a second with an uncon­scious ges­tu­re, a gleam of the eye, a brief lif­ting of the mask that all humans wear to con­ce­al their inner­most sel­ves from the world. In that flee­ting inter­val of oppor­tu­ni­ty the pho­to­grapher must act or lose his pri­ze. Yous­uf Karsh (1908–2002)