Photographer Quotes - Page 30

• ... 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Everybody has that thing where they need to look one way but they come out looking another way and that's what people observe.

  Diane Arbus

  People, Needs, Looks

  Diane Arbus (2003). “Diane Arbus: revelations”, Random House (NY)

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• I believe that you've got to love your work so much that it is all you want to do.

  Richard Avedon

  Believe, Love You, Want

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• I've worked out of a series of no's. No to exquisite light, no to apparent compositions, no to the seduction of poses or narrative. And all these no's force me to the yes. I have a white background. I have the person I'm interested in and the thing that happens between us.

  Richard Avedon

  Light, White, Narrative

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• My photographs don't go below the surface. They don't go below anything. They're readings of the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues.

  Richard Avedon

  Reading, Clue, Surface

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• Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others.

  Bill Brandt

  Fads, Judgment, Should

  Bill Brandt (1993). “Bill Brandt: Selected Texts & Bibliography”, MacMillan Publishing Company

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• Inquiry is more important than answers, for it is the questions we ask and the way in which we ask them that defines us.

  John Paul Caponigro

  Important, Inquiry, Answers

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• How do we know what we know? Is seeing believing? Is believing seeing?

  John Paul Caponigro

  Believe, Knows, Seeing

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• The most important question is, 'Am I asking the most important question?' The second most important question is, 'Am I asking the most important question in the most important way?'

  John Paul Caponigro

  Important, Asking, Way

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• Images are altered in many ways, to many degrees, and for many reasons, so it's important for viewers to be informed of both.

  John Paul Caponigro

  Important, Degrees, Way

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• We don't have enough words for photography. Can you imagine writers having only one word for writing?

  John Paul Caponigro

  Photography, Writing, Imagine

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