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Quote by Frederick Sommer

“Art is the splendor of reality before everything has become meaning.”

Quote by Frederick Sommer

Author

Frederick Sommer

Frederick Sommer was an American visual artist known for his unique photography and painting works. His art, often themed around natural landscapes and everyday objects, demonstrated a profound understanding of form, color, and light. Sommer's artistic career spanned half a century, and his works had a profound impact on subsequent artists. more

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“People think the camera steals their soul. Places, I am convinced, are affected in the opposite direction. The more they are photographed (or drawn and painted) the more soul they seem to accumulate.”

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Book:Permutations on the picturesque

Source: Permutations on the picturesque

“It would have been possible to structure my photographs in such a way that no indicators of the present were discernible. However, I wanted to incorporate into the project as a whole the jostling of time-frames I would feel as I set up my tripod on various rocky promontories.”

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“I often wondered why I was attracted to certain landscapes and not others and why my photographs (and depictions by other artists) looked the way they did, Archetypes imprinted on my mind started me on a search.”

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Book:Permutations on the picturesque

Source: Permutations on the picturesque

“Somehow I felt that if Fox Talbot had had more time and more drawing talent, he would have filled in the interval between his two drawings and made a complete panorama. Now, 163 years later, I was able to use his great invention to elaborate on his youthful dream of capturing and fixing the fleeting image. In doing so, I may also have added another little bit to the soul of this extraordinary place.”

Source: Permutations on the picturesque

“I have been using the art of photography to research the ways in which the pictorial strategies of the Nineteenth Century color the way in which the American landscape is apprehended by today's viewers.”

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“Photography, of course, is the perfect medium for the investigation. It can reveal the truth of present day specifics and particularities, while at the same time, by conscious choice of lighting and pictorial structure, suggest the aesthetic legacy of the past.”

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Author:John Pfahl

“It is not without trepidation that I have appropriated the codes of the Sublime and the Picturesque in my work. After all, serious photographers have spent most of this century trying to expunge such extravagances from their art. The tradition lives on, mostly in calendars and picture postcards. I was challenged to rework and revitalize that which had been so roundly denigrated.”

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Author:John Pfahl

“While making my picture window photographs, I came to think that every room was like a gigantic camera forever pointed at the same view.”

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Author:John Pfahl

“Strangers with puzzled looks were amazingly cooperative in letting me into their rooms with my photographic gear. They let me take down the curtains, wash the windows, and rearrange the furniture. Often, too, they expressed their desire to share their view with others, as if it were a non-depletable treasure. I liked the idea that my photographic vantage points were not solely determined by myself. They were predetermined by others, sometimes years earlier, and patiently waited for me to discover them.”

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“As Estelle Jussim wrote, it is almost impossible for a single photograph to state both the problem and the solution.”

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Author:John Pfahl