Photographer Quotes - Page 22

• ... nature photographs downright bore me for some reason or other. I think: 'Oh, yes. Look at that sand dune. What of it?'

  Walker Evans

  Photography, Thinking, Looks

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• Privilege, if you're very strict, is an immoral and unjust thing to have, but if you've got it you didn't choose to get it and you might as well use it. You're privileged to be at Yale, but you know you're under an obligation to repay what's been put into you.

  Walker Evans

  Photography, Yale, Use

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• I never took it upon myself to change the world. And those contemporaries of mine who were going around falling for the idea that they were going to bring down the United States government and make a new world were just asses to me.

  Walker Evans

  Photography, Fall, Government

  Thomas Southall, Walker Evans, James Agee, Friends of Photography, Amon Carter Museum of Western Art (1990). “Of time & place: Walker Evans and William Christenberry”, Friends of Photography Bookstore

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• It's too presumptuous and naïve to think you can change society by a photograph or anything else... I equate that with propaganda; I think that's a lower rank of purpose.

  Walker Evans

  Photography, Thinking, Purpose

  Thomas Southall, Walker Evans, James Agee, Friends of Photography, Amon Carter Museum of Western Art (1990). “Of time & place: Walker Evans and William Christenberry”, Friends of Photography Bookstore

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• I have a burning desire to see what things look like photographed by me.

  Garry Winogrand

  Photography, Desire, Looks

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• A photograph can look any way.

  Garry Winogrand

  Photography, Looks, Way

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• I get totally out of myself. It's the closest I come to not existing, I think, which is the best - which is to me attractive.

  Garry Winogrand

  Photography, Thinking, Attractive

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• I really try to divorce myself from any thought of possible use of this stuff. That's part of the discipline. My only purpose while I'm working is to try to make interesting photographs, and what to do with them is another act - an alter consideration. Certainly while I'm working, I want them to be as useless as possible.

  Garry Winogrand

  Photography, Divorce, Discipline

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• The only thing that's difficult is reloading when things are happening. Can you get it done fast enough?

  Garry Winogrand

  Photography, Done, Enough

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• There are things I back off from trying to talk about, you know. Particularly my own work. Also, there may be things better left unsaid. At times I'd much rather talk about other (people's) work.

  Garry Winogrand

  Photography, People, Trying

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• ...just like some people's instinct to photograph is triggered by vacation... assignments might be that to me and that's why I've built my life around assignments. That was the way to live the photographic life.

  Sam Abell

  Vacation, People, Way To Live

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• The neatest part of this book I'm working on - to me - are the pictures that show the process... Because photographers... think things through and... it isn't luck, and it isn't random and it isn't accidental. It isn't.

  Sam Abell

  Book, Thinking, Luck

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• If a medium is representational by nature of the realistic image formed by a lens, I see no reason why we should stand on our heads to distort that function. On the contrary, we should take hold of that very quality, make use of it, and explore it to the fullest.

  Berenice Abbott

  Quality, Lenses, Use

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

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• Photography was the medium preeminently qualified to unite art with science. Photography was born in the years which ushered in the scientific age, an offspring of both science and art.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Art, Years

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• The art is in selecting what is worthwhile to take the trouble about.

  Berenice Abbott

  Art, Trouble, Worthwhile

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• To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it. The photographer creates, evolves a better, more selective, more acute eye by looking ever more sharply at what is going on in the world. 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. 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

  Photography, Philosophy, Mean

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• Abstraction in photography is ridiculous, and is only an imitation of painting. We stopped imitating painters a hundred years ago, so to imitate them in this day and age is laughable.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Years, Age

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• I haven't seen too many images that have impressed me!

  Berenice Abbott

  Havens, Impressed

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• Self-conscious artiness is fatal, but it certainly would not hurt to study composition in general. Having a basic understanding of composition would help construct a better organized image.

  Berenice Abbott

  Hurt, Self, Understanding

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• I believe there is no more creative medium than photography to recreate the living world of our time. Photography gladly accepts the challenge because it is at home in its element: namely, realism - real life - the now.

  Berenice Abbott

  Photography, Real, Believe

  "Photography at the Crossroads". Essay by Berenice Abbott, 1951.

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• Today we are confronted with reality on the vastest scale mankind has known and this puts a greater responsibility on the photographer.

  Berenice Abbott

  Responsibility, Reality, Today

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• I think the most beautiful inventions are the ones you don't think of.

  Diane Arbus

  Beautiful, Thinking, Invention

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• I used to have this notion when I was a kid that the minute you said anything, it was no longer true. Of course it would have driven me crazy very rapidly if I hadn't dropped it, but there's something similar in what I'm trying to say. That once it's been done, you want to go someplace else. There's just some sense of straining.

  Diane Arbus

  Crazy, Kids, Trying

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• The Chinese have a theory that you pass through boredom into fascination and I think it's true. I would never choose a subject for what it means to me or what I think about it. You've just got to choose a subject - and what you feel about it, what it means, begins to unfold if you just plain choose a subject and do it enough.

  Diane Arbus

  Mean, Thinking, Boredom

  José Napoleón Oropeza, Diane Arbus (1986). “El bosque de los elegidos: escrito en homenaje a Diane Arbus”

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• I'm very little drawn to photographing people that are known or even subjects that are known. They fascinate me when I've barely heard of them.

  Diane Arbus

  People, Littles, Heard

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