Frederick Sommer Quotes

• My photographs are not pure: they are a seething wealth of imperfection.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Imperfection, Photographer

  10 Copy quote

• ... art is images you carry. You cannot carry nature with you, but you carry images of nature. When you go out to make a picture you find you are moved by something which is in agreement with an image you already held within yourself.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Art, Agreement

  9 Copy quote

• In total acceptance, almost everything becomes a revelation.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Acceptance, Photographer

  4 Copy quote

• Life itself is not the reality. We are the ones who put life into stones and pebbles.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Reality, Stones

  Frederick Sommer, Stephen Aldrich (1987). “The mistress of this world has no name”

  18 Copy quote

• Ideas and thoughts collide and sort themselves out in these fruitful collisions.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Ideas, Photographer

  Frederick Sommer (1984). “Sommer: Words”

  10 Copy quote

• Art is the splendor of reality before everything has become meaning.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Art, Reality

  4 Copy quote

• Some speak of a return to nature, I wonder where they could have been?

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Return, Photographer

  Frederick Sommer, John Weiss, University of Delaware. Dept. of Art, Delaware Art Museum (1980). “Venus, Jupiter & Mars: the photographs of Frederick Sommer : an exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum from April 27 through June 8, 1980”

  5 Copy quote

• Art is not arbitrary. A fine painting is not there by accident; it is not arrived at by chance. We are sensitive to tonalities.

  Frederick Sommer

  Art, Arbitrary, Chance

  Frederick Sommer (1984). “Sommer: Words”

  9 Copy quote

• Reality is greater than our dreams.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Dream, Reality

  4 Copy quote

• The only way to understand something is to be confronted by something that is difficult to understand.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Way, Photographer

  Frederick Sommer, John Weiss, University of Delaware. Dept. of Art, Delaware Art Museum (1980). “Venus, Jupiter & Mars: the photographs of Frederick Sommer : an exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum from April 27 through June 8, 1980”

  5 Copy quote

• The Art of Vermeer must have been there on the morning of creation.

  Frederick Sommer

  Art, Morning, Vermeer

  14 Copy quote

• The smallest modification of tonality affects structure. Some things have to be rather large, but elegance is the presentation of things in their minimum dimensions.

  Frederick Sommer

  Dimensions, Elegance, Structure

  Frederick Sommer (1984). “Sommer: Words”

  8 Copy quote

• Poetic and speculative photographs can result if one works carefully and accurately, yet letting chance relationships have full play.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Play, Chance

  6 Copy quote

• The coherent way of investigating any field is to examine its possible relatedness to other things.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Way, Fields

  Frederick Sommer, University of Arizona. Center for Creative Photography (1984). “Sommer: . Images”

  8 Copy quote

• Art accepts what it finds.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Art, Photographer

  6 Copy quote

• We work for that part of our vision which is uncompleted.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Vision, Photographer

  8 Copy quote

• Photography is a distributive act leading to a privileged condition.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Conditions, Privileged

  6 Copy quote

• Words represent images: nothing can be said for which there is no image.

  Frederick Sommer

  Said

  Frederick Sommer, University of Arizona. Center for Creative Photography (1984). “Sommer: . Images”

  4 Copy quote

• Everything is shared by everything else; there are no discontinuities.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Photographer, Discontinuity

  Frederick Sommer, John Weiss, University of Delaware. Dept. of Art, Delaware Art Museum (1980). “Venus, Jupiter & Mars: the photographs of Frederick Sommer : an exhibition at the Delaware Art Museum from April 27 through June 8, 1980”

  4 Copy quote

• I could take a cow and implant a camera in it and let it amble around the city or in its own domain (I say a cow because a human being I would not trust). If the camera was programmed to go off at an indeterminate series of moments, the samplings would be fantastic.

  Frederick Sommer

  Cities, Cameras, Would Be

  7 Copy quote

• If I could find them (assemblages) in nature I would photograph them. I make them because through photography I have a knowledge of things that can't be found.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Photographer, Found

  4 Copy quote

• Art and accident are one.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Art, Photographer

  6 Copy quote

• Ideas and art are the possibility of an answer tomorrow.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Art, Ideas

  4 Copy quote

• The field of action of a photograph should be that chessboard of the heart and mind upon which poetry and art have always operated

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Art, Mind

  7 Copy quote

• Choice and chance structure art and nature.

  Frederick Sommer

  Photography, Art, Choices

  Frederick Sommer, University of Arizona. Center for Creative Photography (1984). “Sommer: . Images”

  7 Copy quote

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