“I may be wrong, but the essential illustrative nature of most documentary photography, and the worship of the object per se, in our best nature photography, is not enough to satisfy the man of today, compounded as he is of Christ, Freud, and Marx.” MenMayEnoughTodayChristObjectsHe ManEssentialsPhotographyWorshipPhotographerDocumentariesBest NatureDocumentary Photography Author:Aaron Siskind
“As photographers, we must learn to relax our beliefs. Move on objects with your eye straight on, to the left, around on the right. Watch them grow large as they approach, group and regroup as you shift your position. Relationships gradually emerge and sometimes assert themselves with finality. And that's your picture.” SometimesEyeMovingBeliefLeftGrowsWatchesGroupsPositionObjectsApproachPhotographerRelaxFinality Author:Aaron Siskind
“I am afraid that there are more people than I can imagine who can go no further than appreciating a picture that is a rectangle with an object in the middle of it, which they can identify.” PeopleI CanImagineMiddleObjectsAppreciatePhotographerRectangles Author:William Eggleston
“The camera machine cannot evade the objects which are in front of it. When the photographer selects this movement, the light, the objects, he must be true to them. If he includes in his space a strip of grass, it must be felt as the living differentiated thing it is and so recorded. It must take its proper but no less important place as a shape and a texture in relationship to the mountain tree or what not, which are included.” IfsImportantLightFeltSpaceTreeFrontsMovementObjectsShapesMountainMachinesCamerasPhotographerBeing TrueGrassTexture Author:Paul Strand
“All photographs are about light. The great majority of photographs record light as a way of describing objects in space. A few photographs are less about objects and more about the space that contains them. Still fewer photographs are about light itself.” WayStillsLightSpaceRecordsObjectsMajorityPhotographerPhotographFewerDescribing Author:John Paul Caponigro
“One reason I was interested in photography was to get away from the preciousness of the art object.” ArtReasonObjectsPhotographyPhotographerGet AwayCindy Author:Cindy Sherman
“Why can't a photograph be all four things at once? -be an art object; be a document, what ever that means exactly, but deal with content; be a formalist exploration; and operate on some, metaphor is not the right word but, resonant level.” MeanArtLevelsDealsFourObjectsPhotographerPhotographMetaphorExplorationDocumentsRight Words Author:Stephen Shore
“Photographers direct the eye toward a particular object. We who write, one hopes, are directing the heart and the soul.” WritingHeartSoulEyeObjectsParticularDirectPhotographer Author:Nikki Giovanni
“When the object that is produced...the photographic image...has the ability to make tears come to your eyes; to inspire you to the point where you have to catch your breath, then nothing else matters.” MatterEyeAbilityObjectsTearsInspirePhotographyBreathsPhotographer Author:John Sexton
“The images which the [press] photographer has filtered from reality, whether particular events or the anguish of human reactions to them, already bear a stamp of authenticity which the photographer is powerless to alter by one jot or tittle; the meaning of the objects, by a process of purification, itself becomes the theme of the work.” HumansRealityProcessEventsObjectsParticularBearsPressesPhotographerReactionsAuthenticityThemeAnguishPowerlessStampsPurification Author:Yukio Mishima
“When everything that is called art was well and truly riddled with rheumatism, the photographer lit the thousands of candles whose power is contained in his flame, and the sensitive paper absorbed by degrees the blackness cut out of some ordinary object. He had invented a fresh and tender flash of lightning.” WellsArtCuttingObjectsDegreesPaperOrdinaryPhotographerFlamesSensitiveCandleFlashLightningLitBlackness Author:Tristan Tzara
“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.” WellsRealizingObjectsPhotographerCastsCinemaParadoxLensesLuminousDuration Author:Andre Bazin
“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.” I CanUseEyeGreaterSubjectsObjectsProduceProjectsCamerasPhotographerActiveImpressionLandscape Book:Olafur Eliasson: photographs Source: Olafur Eliasson: photographs
“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.” FeelsArtLevelsEmotionObjectsRemainsPhotographerPhotographLinkedDomainSouvenirsPersonal History Author:Chris Marker
“There is an urgent need to examine old opinions and look at things from a new viewpoint. There must be an increase in the joy one takes in an object, and the photographer should become fully conscious of the splendid fidelity of reproduction made possible by his technique. Nature, after all, is not so poor that she requires constant improvement.” NeedsShouldLooksMadeJoyPoorOpinionObjectsConsciousIncreaseConstantPhotographerTechniqueImprovementUrgentSplendidFidelityViewpointsReproductionConstant Improvement Book:Albert Renger-Patzsch: joy before the object Source: Albert Renger-Patzsch: joy before the object
“Sometimes a photographer is a passenger, sometimes a person who stays in one place. What he watches changes constantly, but his watching never changes. He doesn't examine like a doctor, defend like a lawyer, analyze like a scholar, support like a priest, make people laugh like a comedian, or intoxicate like a singer. He only watches. This is enough. No, this is all I can do. All a photographer can do is watch. Therefore, a photographer has to watch all the time. He must face the object and make his entire body an eye. A photographer is someone who wagers everything on seeing.” PeoplePersonsI CanSometimesEnoughBodyEyeFacesCan DoWatchesSupportLaughingSeeingObjectsDoctorsPhotographerLawyerSingersComedianPriestsScholarNever ChangeMaking People LaughPassengersWagers Author:Shomei Tomatsu
“I take photographs with love, so I try to make them art objects. But I make them for myself first and foremost - that is important.” TryingFirstsArtImportantObjectsPhotographyPhotographerPhotograph Author:Jacques-Henri Lartigue