Berenice Abbott Quotes

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

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Fall, Photographer

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

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Emotion, Teach

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

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Past, Photographer

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• 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

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• What the human eye observes casually and incuriously, the eye of the camera (the lens) notes with relentless fidelity.

  Berenice Abbott

  Eye, Cameras, Photographer

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• 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”

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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.

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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

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• 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.

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

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Strong, Action

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• 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

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• 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”

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• 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

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• 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”

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• 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

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

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, World, Photographer

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• 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

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

  Berenice Abbott

  Cameras, Photographer, Preservation

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• 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”

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• 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

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• The photograph may be presented as finely and artistically as you will; but to merit serious consideration, must be directly connected with the world we live in.

  Berenice Abbott

  World, May, Merit

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