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Photograph Quotes

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Photograph Quotes

“... [L]ess than at any time does a simple reproduction of reality tell us anything about reality. A photograph of the Krupp works or GEC yields almost nothing about those institutions. Reality proper has slipped into the functional. The reification of human relationships, the factory, let's say, no longer reveals these relationships. Therefore something has to be constructed, something artificial, something set up.”

HumansDoeRealitySimpleInstitutionsPhotographYieldFactoriesArtificialHuman RelationsReproductionHuman Relationships
Author:Walter Benjamin
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“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
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“One of the many ways of contesting level-zero, and one of the best, is to take photographs, an activity in which one should start becoming adept very early in life, teach it to children since it requires discipline, aesthetic education, a good eye and steady fingers.”

WayShouldChildrenEyeLevelsTeachBecomingDisciplineActivityFingersPhotographZeroSteadyAestheticAdeptLife Teaches
Book:Hopscotch, Blow-Up, We Love Glenda So Much
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“Once a photographer is convinced that the camera can lie and that, strictly speaking, the vast majority of photographs are camera lies, inasmuch as they tell only part of a story or tell it in distorted form, half the battle is won. Once he has conceded that photography is not a naturalistic medium of rendition and that striving for naturalism in a photograph is futile, he can turn his attention to using a camera to make more effective pictures.”

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Author:Andreas Feininger
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“Despite having been awarded the dubious honor of arthood, all photography is still perceived as having one foot in the real world, a toe in the chilly waters of verisimilitude, no matter how often it is demonstrated that photographs can and do lie.”

WorldStillsRealMatterLyingWaterFeetHonorPhotographyPhotographDespiteReal WorldToesDubiousChilly
Book:Defining eye: women photographers of the 20th century : selections from the Helen Kornblum collection
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“Given the lack of public skills in reading photographs, given that photographic content is sometimes buried in beauty, contemporary landscape photographers are often condemned to making pretty pictures. Dramatic clouds and sifting light can overwhelm more mundane information. Yet who can resist beautiful landscape pictures of one kind or another? Not I.”

KindSometimesLightBeautifulReadingGivenInformationSkillsPhotographerPhotographCloudsContemporaryLandscapeDramaticBuriedMundaneSiftingPretty PictureBeautiful Landscapes
Author:Lucy R. Lippard
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“In 1916, when Johnny Heartfield and I invented photomontage in my studio at the south end of the town at five o'clock one May morning, we had no idea of the immense possibilities, or of the thorny but successful career, that awaited the new invention. On a piece of cardboard we pasted a mishmash of advertisements for hernia belts, student song books and dog food, labels from schnaps and wine bottles, and photographs from picture papers, cut up at will in such a way as to say, in pictures, what would have been banned by the censors if we had said it in words.”

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Author:George Grosz
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“During the fifteen or twenty years in which I tried - it was not always easy with publishers, newspapers, etc. - to forbid photographs, it was not at all in order to mark a sort of blank, absence, or disappearance of the image; it was because the code that dominates at once the production of these images, the framing they are made to undergo, the social implications (showing the writer's head framed in front his bookshelves, the whole scenario) seemed to me to be, first of all, terribly boring, but also contrary to what I am trying to write and to work on.”

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Author:Jacques Derrida
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“Photography is the most transparent of the art mediums devised or discovered by man. It is probably for this reason that it proves so difficult to make the photograph transcend its almost inevitable function as document and act as a work of art as well.”

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Book:The Collected Essays and Criticism, Volume 2: Arrogant Purpose, 1945-1949
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“[After Easy Rider] I couldn't get another movie, so I lived in Mexico City for a couple of years. I lived in Paris for a couple of years. I didn't take any photographs, and then I went to Japan and saw a Nikon used. I bought it, and I just started, like an alcoholic. I shot 300 rolls of film. That was the beginning of me starting again.”

YearsFilmUsedEasyCitiesSawsCoupleShotsPhotographStartingParisJapanMexicoAlcoholicsRidersMexico CityNikonEasy Rider
Author:Dennis Hopper
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“... I'm sort of a nervous person with the camera, so I will just shoot arbitrarily until I can focus and compose something, and then I make a shot. So generally, in [the] proof sheets, there are only three or four really concentrated efforts to take a photograph. It's not like a professional kind of person who sets it up so every photograph looks really cool.”

LooksKindPersonsI CanThreeEffortFocusFourShotsCamerasPhotographProofNervousSheetsReally Cool
Book:Dennis Hopper: Interviews
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“The heavy odds against finding the desired... work of art in the mess and flux of life, as opposed to the serene orderliness of imagined reality, give a special tense dazzle and an atmosphere of tour de force to any photographs that succeed in the search.”

GivingArtRealityForceSpecialSucceedFindingsPhotographHeavyMessAtmosphereWorks Of ArtOddsTenseSereneFluxDazzleOrderliness
Book:Diana & Nikon: Essays on Photography
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“They took 3-D digital photographs of my entire body. I had to pose stark naked, assuming a kind of Spider-Man position. After a minute, one of the technicians pointed to my genitals and said, Um, we're not getting enough data there ... It wasn't what you think. It turns out that the fancy digital camera doesn't pick up dark areas too well, and they were having trouble because of the hair down there. I actually had to spray on this highlighter stuff. (On having digital photos taken for the invisible man role in the film Hollow Man)”

ThinkingMenWellsKindSaidEnoughBodyFilmTurnsStuffDarkRolesTakenTroubleMinutesPositionHairPicksAreasCamerasAssumingPhotographInvisibleNakedDataFancyDigitalSpidersHollowStarksSpraySpider ManTechniciansDigital CamerasHollow Man
Author:Kevin Bacon
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