Berenice Abbott Quotes

Quotes about:

• 

  I didn't decide to be a photographer; I just happened to fall into it.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Fall, Photographer

  60 Copy quote

  Report

• Photography doesn't teach you to express your emotions; it teaches you how to see.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Emotion, Teach

  25 Copy quote

  Report

• Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Past, Photographer

  28 Copy quote

  Report

• Let us first say what photography is not. A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. It is not just a pretty picture, not an exercise in contortionist techniques and sheer print quality. It is or should be a significant document, a penetrating statement, which can be described in a very simple term-selectivity.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Exercise, Simple

  23 Copy quote

  Report

• What the human eye observes causally and incuriously, the eye of the camera notes with relentless fidelity.

  Berenice Abbott

  Eye, Cameras, Photographer

  18 Copy quote

  Report

• Photography is not only drawing with light, though light is the indispensable agent of its being. It is modeling or sculpturing with light, to reproduce the plastic form of natural objects. It is painting with light.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Light, Drawing

  Berenice Abbott (1944). “A guide to better photography”

  15 Copy quote

  Report

• Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself.

  Berenice Abbott

  Real, People, Optimism

  9 Copy quote

  Report

• There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.

  Berenice Abbott

  Inspirational, Teacher, Ruins

  11 Copy quote

  Report

• Photography helps people to see.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, People, Helping

  "Berenice Abbott: Still Feisty and Eager at 91" by Richard F.Shepard. Archives, www.nytimes.com. 1989.

  16 Copy quote

  Report

• I'm not a nice girl; I'm a photographer. (On being told by a Federal Art Project official, after she photographed the Bowery, that a nice girl should not go into such neighborhoods )

  Berenice Abbott

  Girl, Art, Nice

  6 Copy quote

  Report

• Like every other means of expression, photography, if it is to be utterly honest and direct, should be related to the life of the times - the pulse of today.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Mean, Expression

  15 Copy quote

  Report

• I am so fascinated with this century it will help keep me alive. I'll be there until the last minute, fighting.

  Berenice Abbott

  Fighting, Alive, Lasts

  "Berenice Abbott: the photography trailblazer who had supersight" by Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. March 10, 2015.

  15 Copy quote

  Report

• I agree that all good photographs are documents, but I also know that all documents are certainly not good photographs. Furthermore, a good photographer does not merely document, he probes the subject, he 'uncovers' it.

  Berenice Abbott

  Doe, Photographer, Agree

  11 Copy quote

  Report

• Pictures are wasted unless the motive power which impelled you to action is strong and stirring.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Strong, Action

  8 Copy quote

  Report

• Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Song, Mean

  Berenice Abbott, Julia Van Haaften (1989). “Berenice Abbott, photographer: a modern vision : a selection of photographs and essays”

  12 Copy quote

  Report

• The photographer is the contemporary being par excellence; through his eyes the now becomes the past.

  Berenice Abbott

  Eye, Past, Excellence

  Nancy Tousley, Berenice Abbott, Glenbow Museum, Edmonton Art Gallery, Southern Alberta Art Gallery (1982). “The Berenice Abbott portfolios”, Glenbow

  2 Copy quote

  Report

• The challenge for me has first been to see things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing ball. In a word, I have tried to be objective.

  Berenice Abbott

  Cities, Challenges, Portraits

  Berenice Abbott, Julia Van Haaften (1989). “Berenice Abbott, photographer: a modern vision : a selection of photographs and essays”

  7 Copy quote

  Report

• Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Growing Up, Walks

  Nancy Tousley, Berenice Abbott, Glenbow Museum, Edmonton Art Gallery, Southern Alberta Art Gallery (1982). “The Berenice Abbott portfolios”, Glenbow

  10 Copy quote

  Report

• Imagine a world without photography, one could only imagine.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, World, Photographer

  8 Copy quote

  Report

• Suppose we took a thousand negatives...
  combining the elegances, the squalor, the curiosities, the monuments, the sad faces, the triumphant faces, the power, the irony, the strength, the decay, the past, the present, the future of a city - that would be my favorite picture.

  Berenice Abbott

  Past, Cities, Curiosity

  4 Copy quote

  Report

• The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.

  Berenice Abbott

  Cameras, Photographer, Preservation

  5 Copy quote

  Report

• I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else. Excitement about the subject is the voltage which pushes me over the mountain of drudgery necessary to produce the final photograph.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Ducks, Water

  Berenice Abbott, Julia Van Haaften (1989). “Berenice Abbott, photographer: a modern vision : a selection of photographs and essays”

  5 Copy quote

  Report

• The more you do, the more you realize there is to do, what a vast object the metropolis is, and how the work of photographing could go on forever.

  Berenice Abbott

  Forever, Goes On, Realizing

  3 Copy quote

  Report

• None. They should just go out and photograph and stop talking about it. That's the only way they are going to find themselves. They can't do it in their heads - they have to go out and do it in the camera and get it on film.

  Berenice Abbott

  Talking, Way, Cameras

  5 Copy quote

  Report

• The challenge for me has first been to see things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing ball. In a word, I have tried to be objective. What I mean by objectivity is not the objectivity of a machine, but of a sensible human being with the mystery of personal selection at the heart of it. The second challenge has been to impose order onto the things seen and to supply the visual context and the intellectual framework - that to me is the art of photography.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Art, Mean

  4 Copy quote

  Report

Page 1 of 2

← Prev

1

2

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin