Photographer Quotes - Page 37

• I didn't want to be a woman photographer. That would limit me. I wanted to be a photographer who was a woman, with all the world open to my camera.

  Eve Arnold

  Cameras, World, Want

  Eve Arnold (1995). “Eve Arnold: in retrospect”, Random House (UK)

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• The photographer proceeds, via the intermediary of the lens, to a point where he literally takes a luminous imprint, a cast... [But] the cinema realizes the paradox of moulding itself on the time of the object and of taking the imprint of its duration as well.

  Andre Bazin

  Duration, Lenses, Cinema

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• Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others. Photography is still a very new medium and everything is allowed and everything should be tried and dared... Photography has no rules. It is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it was achieved.

  Bill Brandt

  Sports, Photography, Fads

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• I never divide photographers into creative and uncreative, I just call them photographers. Who is creative? How do you know who is creative or not?

  Imogen Cunningham

  Creative, Divides, Knows

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• The [concentration camps] were swarming with photographers and every new picture of horror served only to diminish the total effect. Now, for a short day, everyone will see what happened to those poor devils in those camps; tomorrow, very few will care what happens to them in the future.

  Robert Capa

  Devil, Care, Tomorrow

  Robert Capa (2015). “Slightly Out Of Focus”, p.245, Pickle Partners Publishing

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• No photographer should be blamed when, instead of capturing reality, he tries to show things he has seen only in his imagination. Photography is the youngest art form. All attempts to enlarge its frontiers are important and should be encouraged.

  Philippe Halsman

  Photography, Art, Reality

  Yvonne Halsman, Philippe Halsman (1989). “Halsman at work: Philippe Halsman and Yvonne Halsman”, Harry N Abrams Inc

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• Herein lies the main objective of portraiture and also its main difficulty. The photographer probes for the innermost. The lens sees only the surface... .

  Philippe Halsman

  Lying, Lenses, Portraiture

  Philippe Halsman (1972). “Halsman sight and insight”

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• [Women photographers] provide an inspiring reminder to all women that the choice to see, or be seen, is ours. We live in a culture in which this decision is undermined by the notion that the single most valuable contribution a woman can make is to be visually attractive. Women photographers make a strong case for seeing and an even stronger case for recording what you see.

  Diane Keaton

  Strong, Choices, Decision

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• The entertainment industry, the advertising industry have taken [the] tools from the art world and made themselves much more politically potent. We are really devastated and very impotent right now. A photographer just working for an advertising company has a platform to be much more politically effective in the world than an artist.

  Jeff Koons

  Art, Taken, Tools

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• I've had my body manipulated so many different times for so many different reasons, whether it's paparazzi photographers or for film posters.

  Keira Knightley

  Different, Body, Film

  "Is Keira Knightley's topless photoshoot the best form of protest?" by Hadley Freeman, www.theguardian.com. November 10, 2014.

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• The process must be concealed from - non-existent for - the photographer, who by definition need think of the art in the taking and not in the making photographs... In short, all that should be necessary to get a good picture is to take a good picture.

  Edwin Land

  Art, Thinking, Needs

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• [Photography] can be tiny, on your phone, or it can be a billboard, or a film-sized projection, or printed in a magazine. I don't think we've been in a time before when so much photography is available in so many formats, when everybody is a photographer.

  Christian Marclay

  Photography, Thinking, Phones

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• The photographer must possess and preserve the receptive faculties of a child who looks at the world for the first time.

  Bill Brandt

  Children, Looks, World

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• I will be remembered when I'm in heaven. People won't remember my name, but they will know the photographer who did that picture of that nurse being kissed by the sailor at the end of World War II. Everybody remembers that.

  Alfred Eisenstaedt

  War, Names, Nurse

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• I can use the camera to make a place or landscape; the camera to a greater extent projects rather than takes in or reproduces. The camera, or, rather, the eye, produces the impression of the place: I as a photographer am not passively taking in; I am active as a subject generating the object.

  Olafur Eliasson

  Eye, Landscape, Cameras

  Olafur Eliasson, Matthew Drutt (2004). “Olafur Eliasson: photographs”

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• We feel more emotion... before an amateur photograph linked to our own life history than before the work of a Great Photographer, because his domain partakes of art, and the intent of the souvenir-object remains at the lower level of personal history.

  Chris Marker

  Art, Levels, Personal History

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• I think that it was a great advantage to go into photography not knowing much about it. Not thinking. I think one of the problems with many photographers today is that they never see for themselves, but just like everybody else.

  Robert Mapplethorpe

  Photography, Thinking, Knowing

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• Always, when the words art and artistic are applied to my photographic work, I am disagreeably affected. This is due, surely, to the bad use and abuse made of those terms. I consider myself a photographer, nothing more. If my photographs differ from that which is usually done in this field, it is precisely because I try to produce not art but honest photographs, without distortions or manipulations.

  Tina Modotti

  Art, Abuse, Trying

  Tina Modotti, Robert Miller, Spencer Throckmorton, Robert Miller Gallery (New York, N.Y.) (1997). “Tina Modotti: photographs”

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• ... I just feel impotent - I don't know which way to start or turn. You know what they say about a prophet in one's own country - well - in a way it works for me too: you see - this might be called my home town - well of all the old friends and acquaintances not one takes me seriously as a photographer - not one has asked me to show my work... (On returning to San Francisco)

  Tina Modotti

  Country, Home, San Francisco

  Tina Modotti, Amy Rule (1986). “The Letters from Tina Modotti to Edward Weston”

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• The majority of photographers still seek artistic effects, imitating other mediums of graphic expression. The result is a hybrid product that does not succeed in giving their work the most valuable characteristic it should have, - photographic quality.

  Tina Modotti

  Expression, Should Have, Giving

  Frida Kahlo, Tina Modotti, Whitechapel Art Gallery (1982). “Frida Kahlo and Tina Modotti”

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• Those who call themselves art photographers are pompous, arrogant egoists.

  Arnold Newman

  Art, Arrogant, Pompous

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• ... any dodge, or trick, or conjuration of any kind is open to the photographer's use so that it belongs to his art and is not false to nature. If the dodges, tricks, etc., lead the photographer astray, so much the worse for him; if they do not assist him to represent nature, he is not fit to use them. It is not the fault of the dodges, it is the fault of the bungler.

  Henry Peach Robinson

  Art, Use, Etc

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• The aim and end of the artist is not truth exactly, much less fact; it is effect... There is no doubt he [the photographer] best gets his effect by way of truth, but he uses it as he would a servant, not a master.

  Henry Peach Robinson

  Artist, Doubt, Use

  Henry Peach Robinson (1896). “The Elements of a Pictorial Photograph”

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• It must be confessed that it takes considerable skill to produce the best kind of lies. It is in the hands of first-class photographers only - and perhaps the indifferent ones - that photography can lie.

  Henry Peach Robinson

  Photography, Lying, Hands

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• Technically perfect, pictorially rotten. (Stieglitz's standard comment on photographs he rejected for publication in The American Amateur Photographer.)

  Alfred Stieglitz

  Perfect, Rotten, Standards

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