Photography Quotes - Page 15

• In my photography, color and composition are inseparable. I see in color.

  William Albert Allard

  Color, Inseparable, Composition

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• Photography is much more about elimination than inclusion. The images we make with a lens typically eliminate ninety percent of our field of view and everything that is out of our field of view. The shutter slices time, eliminating all moments before and after it opens and closes. Three dimensions are reduced to two. And in some cases color is removed. How can we call these kinds of artifacts unaltered?

  John Paul Caponigro

  Views, Color, Two

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• I don't really remember the day when I stood behind my camera with Henry Kissinger on the other side. I am sure he doesn't remember it either. But this photograph is here now to prove that no amount of kindness on my part could make this photograph mean exactly what he.. or even I.. wanted it to mean. It's a reminder of the wonder and terror that is a photograph.

  Richard Avedon

  Kindness, Mean, Sides

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• The picture is good or not from the moment it was caught in the camera.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Cameras, Photographer, Moments

  Henri Cartier-Bresson, Lincoln Kirstein, Beaumont Newhall (1963). “Photographs”

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• At the root of creativity is an impulse to understand, to make sense of random and often unrelated details. For me, photography provides an intersection of time, space, light, and emotional stance. One needs to be still enough, observant enough, and aware enough to recognize the life of the materials, to be able to 'hear through the eyes'.

  Paul Caponigro

  Art, Creativity, Eye

  Paul Caponigro (2002). “New England Days”, p.38, David R. Godine Publisher

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• As far as I am concerned, taking photographs is a means of understanding which cannot be separated from other means of visual expression. It is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one's own originality. It is a way of life.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Mean, Expression, Understanding

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• But I always liked the fact that you get these totally unacceptable images, but they're taken by a really expensive photographer, with great light, and in terms of the quality of the photograph it's a great photograph, but in terms of imagery it's unacceptable, and I like that contradiction.

  Damien Hirst

  Taken, Light, Quality

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• Photography's central role is to be the absolute medium of the day. It is fantastic that there is no longer any technical intimidation.

  Martin Parr

  Roles, Intimidation, Fantastic

  "An Interview with Martin Parr – “Boundaries Merely Exist in People's Minds” (2007)". Interview with Maarten Dings and Joachim Naudts, www.americansuburbx.com. May 17, 2010.

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• Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.

  Alain de Botton

  Attention, Done, World

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• The effort of painting from life has cost my models a great deal of physical discomfort, and cost me a great deal of money in model fees... I have wanted to make the camera obsolete... because, in my reading about early 20th century art, I found that the most frequently used argument made in favor of abstraction was that the camera made realist painting obsolete.

  Philip Pearlstein

  Art, Reading, Effort

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• I guess I've shot about 40,000 negatives and of these I have about 800 pictures I like.

  Harry Callahan

  Photographer, Shots

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• Photography has almost no reality; it is almost a hundred per cent picture. And painting always has reality: you can touch the paint; it has presence; but it always yields a picture - no matter whether good or bad. That's all the theory. It's no good. I once took some small photographs and then smeared them with paint. That partly resolved the problem, and it's really good - better than anything I could ever say on the subject.

  Gerhard Richter

  Reality, Yield, Matter

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• As every artist who has used the method knows - photography's a loyal slave and a tyrannical master.

  Robert Genn

  Artist, Loyal, Slave

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• At 42, I decided to become a photographer because it offered a means of creative thought and action. I didn't rationalize this, I just felt it intuitively and followed my intuition, which I have never regretted.

  Wynn Bullock

  Mean, Creative, Intuition

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• The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.

  John Berger

  God, Memories, Order

  John Berger (2015). “About Looking”, p.44, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• I find it some of the hardest photography and the most challenging photography I've ever done. It's a real challenge to work with the natural features and the natural light.

  Galen Rowell

  Real, Light, Challenges

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• The arts equally have distinct departments, and unless photography has its own possibilities of expression, separate from those of the other arts, it is merely a process, not an art.

  Alfred Stieglitz

  Art, Expression, Possibility

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• Photography suits the temper of this age - of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately.

  Edward Weston

  Ideas, Perfect, Mind

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• Photographers mistake the emotion they feel while taking the photo as a judgment that the photograph is good

  Garry Winogrand

  Mistake, Emotion, Photographer

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• Of course I realize that photography is not the technical facility as much as it is the eye, and this decision that one makes for the moment at which you are going to snap, you know.

  Ben Shahn

  Eye, Decision, Realizing

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• One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind. To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.

  Dorothea Lange

  Cameras, Use, Unattainable

  Anne Whiston Spirn, Dorothea Lange (2009). “Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field”, University Of Chicago Press

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• If I like many photographers, and I do, I account for this by noting a quality they share - animation. They may or may not make a living by photography, but they are alive by it.

  Robert Adams

  Quality, Alive, May

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

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• The more you photograph, the more you realize what can and what can't be photographed. You just have to keep doing it.

  Eliot Porter

  Realizing, Photograph

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• If you are out there shooting, things will happen for you. If you're not out there, you'll only hear about it.

  Jay Maisel

  Shooting, Hearing, Photographer

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• Photography has no rules, it is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved.

  Bill Brandt

  Sports, Matter, Results

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