“To me it is no mystery that we can only photograph effectively what we are truly interested in or-maybe more importantly-are grappling with. Often unconsciously. Otherwise the photographs are merely about an idea or a concept-that stuff eventually falls flat for me-there must be something more, some emotional hook for it to really work for me.” IdeasFallStuffInterestConsciousnessMysteryEmotionalPhotographyConsciousConceptsPhotographFlatsHookEffectivenessGrapplingFlatness Author:Todd Hido
“If you ask people to remember a painting and a photograph, their description of the photograph is far more accurate than that of the painting. Strangely enough, there is a physical element intertwined with the painting. It shakes loose an emotional element within the viewer.” PeopleIfsEnoughRememberAsksEmotionalPaintingElementsPhotographShakesDescriptionAccurateViewersIntertwined Author:Luc Tuymans
“Some of my pictures are poem-like in the sense that they are very condensed, haiku-lik. There are others that, if they were poetry, would be more like Ezra Pound. There is a lot of information in most of my pictures, but not the kind of information you see in documentary photography. There is emotional information in my photographs.” IfsKindWould BeInformationEmotionalPhotographyPhotographerPhotographPoundsDocumentariesHaikuDocumentary Photography Author:Sally Mann
“Despite the illusion of giving understanding, what seeing through photographs really invites is an acquisitive relation to the world that nourishes aesthetic awareness and promotes emotional detachment.” WorldGivingUnderstandingSeeingAwarenessEmotionalIllusionRelationPhotographDespiteInvitesAestheticDetachment Book:On photography Source: On photography
“Essentially, in photography, I think on two levels: one emotional and the other technical. The emotional impact has to do with looking for something dramatic happening in the photograph, something that reaches out and touches somebody in some way. And the technical is having to do with composition and framing - light and dark, light and shadow.” ThinkingWayTwoLightDarkLevelsEmotionalPhotographyHappeningsShadowImpactPhotographDramaticReach OutCompositionLight And DarkFramingLight And Shadow Author:Leonard Nimoy
“This is a photograph, so it is as you see: there are no lies and no deceptions. One can detect here, elevated to an incomparably higher level, the same pathetic emotional appeal that lies concealed in every fake spiritualist photograph, every pornographic photograph; one comes to suspect that the strange, disturbing emotional appeal of the photographic art consists solely in that same repeated refrain: this is a true ghost... this is a photograph, so it is as you see: there are no lies, no deceptions.” ArtLyingLevelsEmotionalStrangeHigherPhotographGhostAppealsDeceptionFakeSuspectsDisturbingPatheticConcealedRefrainHigher LevelEmotional Appeal Author:Yukio Mishima
“... a fact about photography: we can look at people's faces in photographs with an intensity and intimacy that in life we normally only reserve for extreme emotional states - for a first look at someone we may sleep with, or a last look at someone we love.” PeopleFirstsLooksMayStatesFactsLastsFacesSleepEmotionalPhotographyPhotographExtremesIntimacyIntensityReserves Author:Adam Gopnik
“My mother's work has been an enormous influence on me, but not literally. By that I mean, my photographs don't look like hers. That makes it difficult to compare them. What they do share is an emotional intensity.” LooksMeanHas BeensMotherDifficultShareInfluenceEmotionalPhotographEnormousCompareIntensity Author:Amy Arbus
“I started to concentrate more upon how the viewer looks at photographs... I would insert my own text or my own specific reading of the image to give the viewer something they might not interpret or surmise, due to their educated way of looking at images, and reading them for their emotional, psychological, and/or sociological values. So I would start to interject these things that the photograph would not speak of and that I felt needed to be revealed, but that couldn't be revealed from just looking at an image.” WayGivingLooksMightValuesReadingSpeakFeltMy OwnEmotionalNeededPhotographDuesPsychologicalEducatedViewersInsertSociological Author:Lorna Simpson
“If you could see a photograph of what it took to make an advertising photograph - things you don't think about, like the photo assistant carefully arranging the meatballs - the degree of unnaturalness would be astonishing. Yet it produces an image that looks natural, and is orchestrated to provoke basic emotional responses.” IfsThinkingLooksWould BeNaturalProduceEmotionalDegreesResponsePhotographAdvertisingProvokingAstonishingAssistantsArrangingEmotional ResponseMeatballs Author:Sandy Skoglund
“I think I'm really fortunate to be an installation artist who is heavily invested in photography: I don't have the emotional problems with the loss of work that some installation artists have. The photographs wouldn't exist without the installation... but at the same time, I think I'd kill myself if I only did installations. There's something deeply tragic about doing work that you know is temporal.” IfsThinkingKnowsProblemArtistLossEmotionalPhotographyPhotographFortunateTragicInstallationEmotional Problems Author:Sandy Skoglund
“Taking photographs seems to be a means to express some kind of emotional, abstractive narrative. I look at the images that I'm most proud of like a film about the world the way I see it (or at least saw it at that moment, a perspective that seems to be ever-shifting and filled with self-doubt.)” WorldWayLooksKindMeanSelfMomentsSeemsFilmDoubtSawsEmotionalPerspectiveProudFilledPhotographNarrativeThat MomentShiftingSelf-doubt Author:Anton Yelchin
“At a certain point, I got interested in set design for the theater. I was interested in architecture, but I was taking photographs at the same time, and architecture, though it had the design element, it didn't have the narrative, emotional element that I was looking to do. I ended up painting for a while. I was dancing around it, and I realized that all these different interests came together in filmmaking.” DifferentTogetherInterestDesignEmotionalPaintingDancingPhotographArchitectureI RealizedFilmmaking Author:Neil Burger