"The writer Émile Zola was also passionate about photography, which he took up around 1888 and practised intensively from 1895-1900. Unlike Degas, he produced thousands of photographs, and even went as fas as to say, in an interview with the English review The King, 'In my opinion, you cannot say that you have really seen anything fully if you have not taken a photograph of it.' He photographed European cities, often with an extremely audacious composition."
Françoise Heilbrun: Orsay - Photography Éditions Scala, Paris - 2000 traduzione dal francese di Carmela Uranga pag. 82