Photographer Quotes - Page 29

• Art depends on there being affection in its creator's life and an artist must find ways, like everyone else, to nourish it. A photographer down on his or her knees picturing a dog has found pleasure enough to make many things possible.

  Robert Adams

  Dog, Art, Knees

  Robert Adams (1994). “Why People Photograph: Selected Essays and Reviews”

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• Max Kozloff said to me one day, ‘You’re not really a photographer. You do photography, but you do it for your own purposes – your purposes are not the same as others’. I’m not quite sure what he meant, but I like that. I like the way he put it.

  Saul Leiter

  Photography, One Day, Max

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• Sometimes the most interesting visual phenomena occur when you least expect it. Other times, you think youre getting something amazing and the photographs turn out to be boring and predictable. So I think thats why, a long time ago, I consciously tried to let go of artists angst, and instead just hope for the best and enjoy it. I love the journey as much as the destination. If I wasnt a photographer, Id still be a traveler.

  Michael Kenna

  Letting Go, Artist, Journey

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• In my photographic work I'm generally attracted to places that contain memories, history, atmospheres and stories. I'm interested in the places where people have lived, worked and played. I look for traces of the past, visual fingerprints, evidence of activities - they fire my imagination and connect into my own personal experiences. Using the analogy of the theater, I would say that I like to photograph the empty stage, before or after the performance, even in between acts. I love the atmosphere of anticipation, the feeling in the air that events have happened, or will happen soon.

  Michael Kenna

  Memories, Past, Fire

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• The photographer is a manipulator of light; photography is a manipulation of light.

  Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

  Photography, Light, Manipulation

  László Moholy-Nagy, Andreas Haus (1980). “Moholy-Nagy, photographs and photograms”, Pantheon

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• Making information free is survivable so long as only limited numbers of people are disenfranchised. As much as it pains me to say so, we can survive if we only destroy the middle classes of musicians, journalists, and photographers. What is not survivable is the additional destruction of the middle classes in transportation, manufacturing, energy, office work, education, and health care. And all that destruction will come surely enough if the dominant idea of an information economy isn't improved.

  Jaron Lanier

  Pain, Class, Ideas

  Jaron Lanier (2014). “Who Owns the Future?”, p.16, Simon and Schuster

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• By Interstate 70: a dog skeleton, a vacuum cleaner, TV dinners, a doll, a pie, rolls of carpet.Later, next to the South Platte River: algae, broken concrete, jet contrails, the smell of crude oil. What I hope to document, though not at the expense of surface detail, is the form that underlies this apparent chaos.

  Robert Adam

  Dog, Oil, Rivers

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• What is a portrait good for, unless it shows just how the subject was seen by the painter? In the old days before photography came in a sitter had a perfect right to say to the artist: "Paint me just as I am." Now if he wishes absolute fidelity he can go to the photographer and get it.

  Aubrey Beardsley

  Photography, Artist, Perfect

  "Aubrey Beardsley: A Biography". Book by Matthew Sturgis, p. 189, 1999.

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• I print giclees for artists and photographers for a livelihood. My original idea was to somehow combine the two.

  Donald Lambert

  Artist, Ideas, Two

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• I have no doubt about a photographer in particular and a digital artist in general having become contemporary icons.

  Nikolay Semyonov

  Art, Icons, Doubt

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• The act of photography is like going on a hunt in which photographer and camera merge into one indivisible function. This is a hunt for new states of things, situations never seen before, for the improbable, for information.

  Vilem Flusser

  Photography, Cameras, Information

  Vilém Flusser (2013). “Towards a Philosophy of Photography”, p.39, Reaktion Books

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• If the subject is in a suffering circumstance, it is all the more preferable to apply craft to the utmost. Call it art or not, we photographers should always try to pass on our observations with the utmost clarity.

  Dennis Stock

  Art, Suffering, Trying

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• An artist must be ruthlessly selfish.

  W. Eugene Smith

  Selfish, Artist

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• ... to became neighbours and friends instead of journalists. This is the way to make your finest photographs.

  W. Eugene Smith

  Way, Finest, Journalist

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• ...and each time I pressed the shutter release it was a shouted condemnation hurled with the hope that the picture might survive through the years, with the hope that they might echo through the minds of men in the future - causing them caution and remembrance and realization.

  W. Eugene Smith

  Men, Years, Echoes

  W. Eugene Smith (1969). “W. Eugene Smith, his photographs and notes”

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• With a painting, you're taking basic building blocks and making something that's more complex than what you started with. It is a synthetic process. A photograph does the opposite: It takes the world, and puts an order on it, simplifies it.

  Stephen Shore

  Photography, Block, Order

  "On The Nature of Photographs February 20th, 2015". Interview with Luc Sante, aperture.org. February 20, 2015.

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• He was very concerned about his children potentially being kidnapped or attached, and that's why they were covered up. When he went to Berlin zoo, there were 200 photographers.

  Martin Bashir

  Zoos, Children, Covered Up

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• It never seemed important to me that my photos be published. It's important that I take them. There were periods where I didn't have money, and I would imagine that someone would come to me and say: 'Here is money, you can go do your photography, but you must not show it.' I would have accepted right away. On the other hand, if someone had come to me saying: 'Here is money to do your photography, but after your death it must be destroyed,' I would have refused.

  Josef Koudelka

  Photography, Hands, Important

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• I started modeling at 14. It's simple. You respond to what the photographer wants and wear other people's ideas. I got bored with it, though, so I went to university.

  Lily Cole

  Simple, Ideas, People

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Detachment, lack of sentimentality, originality, a lot of things that sound rather empty. I know what they mean. Let's say, "visual impact" may not mean much to anybody. I could point it out though. I mean it's a quality that something has or does not have. Coherence. Well, some things are weak, some things are strong.

  Walker Evans

  Photography, Strong, Mean

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• The secret of photography is, the camera takes on the character and personality of the handler.

  Walker Evans

  Photography, Character, Personality

  Walker Evans, Jeff Rosenheim, Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.) (2002). “Walker Evans : polaroids”, Scalo Verlag Ac

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• I work rather blindly. I have a theory that seems to work with me that some of the best things you ever do sort of come through you. You don't know where you get the impetus and response to what's before your eyes.

  Walker Evans

  Photography, Eye, Theory

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• I do note that photography, a despised medium to work in, is full of empty phonies and worthless commercial people. That presents quite a challenge to the man who can take delight in being in a very difficult, disdained medium.

  Walker Evans

  Photography, Men, People

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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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