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Victor Burgin Quotes

Artist

Victor Burgin is a British artist known for his photographic and visual art works. His works often explore issues of identity, power, and visual narrative, frequently blending literary and philosophical elements.

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Famous Victor Burgin Quotes

“Looking is not indifferent. There can never be any question of 'just looking'.”

Indifferent

Book:Situational Aesthetics: Selected Writings by Victor Burgin

Source: Situational Aesthetics: Selected Writings by Victor Burgin

“It seems to be extensively believed by photographers that meanings are to be found in the world much in the way rabbits are found in downs, and all that is required is the talent to spot them and the skill to shoot them... But those moments of truth for which the photographic opportunist waits, finger on the button, are as great a mystification as the notion of autonomous creativity.”

World Way Moments Seems Found Waiting Creativity Talent Skills Fingers Notion Photographer Spots Buttons Rabbits Autonomous Opportunist Moment Of Truth

Book:Situational Aesthetics: Selected Writings by Victor Burgin

Source: Situational Aesthetics: Selected Writings by Victor Burgin

“The wholeness, coherence, identity, which we attribute to the depicted scene [in a photograph] is a projection, a refusal of an impoverished reality in favour of an imagined plenitude.”

Reality Identity Scene Photograph Attributes Wholeness Favour Projection Refusal Coherence Plenitude

Author:Victor Burgin

“Our conviction that we are free to choose what we make of a photograph hides the complicity to which we are recruited in the very act of looking.”

Photograph Conviction Complicity

Book:Thinking photography

Source: Thinking photography

“A job the artist does which no-one else does is to dismantle existing communication codes and to combine some of their elements into structures which can be used to generate new pictures of the world.”

World Doe Jobs Used Artist Communication Elements Structure Code

Author:Victor Burgin

“The only pertinent political question in relation to an identity [or its photograph] is not Is it really coherent? but What does it actually achieve?”

Doe Political Achieve Identity Relation Photograph Pertinent

Author:Victor Burgin

“Even the uncaptioned art photograph is invaded by language in the very moment it is looked at: in memory, in association, snatches of words and images continually intermingle and exchange one for the other.”

Art Moments Language Memories Photograph Association

Author:Victor Burgin

About the Author

Born: 1941
Known for: Artist
Quotes: 7

Books & Sources

Situational Aesthetics: Selected Writings by Victor BurginRelated source material

Thinking photographyRelated source material

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