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Photograph Quotes

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Photograph Quotes

“Perhaps it's true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house---the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture---must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstitutred. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story.”

LittlesWholeStoriesHouseHoursEventsOrdinaryRemainsLifetimePhotographBonesRuinsClockOutcomesDozenBurnedFurnitureOrdinary Things
Book:The God of Small Things
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“It is photography itself that creates the illusion of innocence. Its ironies of frozen narrative lend to its subjects an apparent unawareness that they will change or die. It is the future they are innocent of. Fifty years on we look at them with the godly knowledge of how they turne dout after all - who they married, the date of their death - with no thought for who will one day be holding photographs of us.”

YearsLooksDiesSubjectsOne DayPhotographyMarriedIllusionPhotographInnocentInnocenceNarrativeIronyFiftyGodlyFrozenUnawareness
Author:Ian Mcewan
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“One day, quite some time ago, I happened on a photograph of Napoleon’s youngest brother, Jerome, taken in 1852. And I realized then, with an amazement I have not been able to lessen since: ‘I am looking at eyes that looked at the Emperor.’ Sometimes I would mention this amazement, but since no one seemed to share it, nor even to understand it (life consists of these little touches of solitude), I forgot about it.”

LittlesSometimesEyeAbleTakenHappenedShareBrotherOne DaySolitudePhotographI RealizedEmperorAmazement
Author:Roland Barthes
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“It's funny, but certain faces seem to go in and out of style. You look at old photographs and everybody has a certain look to them, almost as if they're related. Look at pictures from ten years later and you can see that there's a new kind of face starting to predominate, and that the old faces are fading away and vanishing, never to be seen again.”

IfsYearsLooksKindSeemsFacesCertainStyleTenPhotographStartingRelatedFadingVanishingFading AwayOld Photographs
Book:Watchmen
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“All migrants leave their pasts behind, although some try to pack it into bundles and boxes-but on the journey something seeps out of the treasured mementoes and old photographs, until even their owners fail to recognize them, because it is the fate of migrants to be stripped of history, to stand naked amidst the scorn of strangers upon whom they see rich clothing, the brocades of continuity and the eyebrows of belonging.”

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Author:Salman Rushdie
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“There, in the center of that silence was not eternity but the death of time and a loneliness so profound the word itself had no meaning. For loneliness assumed the absence of other people, and the solitude she found in that desperate terrain had never admitted the possibility of other people. She wept then. Tears for the deaths of the littlest things: the castaway shoes of children; broken stems of marsh grass battered and drowned by the sea; prom photographs of dead women she never knew; wedding rings in pawnshop windows; the tiny bodies of Cornish hens in a nest of rice.”

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Book:Sula
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“In the photograph by my bed my mother is perpetually smiling on me. I guess I have forgiven us both, although sometimes in the night my dreams will take me back to the sadness, and I have to wake up and forgive us again.”

SometimesDreamMotherNightSadnessBedWake UpForgivingPhotographTake MeForgivenTake Me Back
Book:Of love and life: three novels selected and condensed by Reader's Digest
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“I look at the field, and I think about the boy who just made the touchdown. I think that these are the glory days for that boy, and this moment will just be another story someday because all the people who make touchdowns and home runs will become somebody's dad. And when his children look at his yearbook photograph, they will think that their dad was rugged and handsome and looked a lot happier than they are. I just hope I remember to tell my kids that they are as happy as I look in my old photographs. And I hope that they believe me.”

PeopleThinkingBelieveLooksChildrenMadeMomentsStoriesHomeRunningKidsRememberBoysFieldsDadGloryPhotographSomedayBelieve In MeHandsomeHome RunRuggedTouchdownsYearbookOld PhotographsGlory Days
Book:The Perks of Being a Wallflower YA edition
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“It is as if the Photograph always carries its referent with itself, both affected by the same amorous or funereal immobility, at the very heart of the moving world: they are glued together, limb by limb, like the condemned man and the corpse in certain tortures; or even like those pairs of fish (sharks, I think, according to Michelet) which navigate in convoy, as though united by an eternal coitus.”

IfsThinkingMenWorldHeartTogetherMovingCertainUnitedEternalPhotographFishesTorturePairsCarrieAffectedLimbsCorpsesSharksNavigateAmorous
Author:Roland Barthes
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“For the photograph's immobility is somehow the result of a perverse confusion between two concepts: the Real and the Live: by attesting that the object has been real, the photograph surreptitiously induces belief that it is alive, because of that delusion which makes us attribute to Reality an absolute superior, somehow eternal value; but by shifting this reality to the past ("this-has-been"), the photograph suggests that it is already dead.”

Has BeensTwoRealRealityPastValuesBeliefResultsAliveObjectsEternalConceptsAbsolutesPhotographSuperiorsConfusionDelusionLive ByAttributesShiftingBeen Real
Author:Roland Barthes
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“The Photograph is an extended, loaded evidence — as if it caricatured not the figure of what it represents (quite the converse) but its very existence ... The Photograph then becomes a bizarre (i)medium(i), a new form of hallucination: false on the level of perception, true on the level of time: a temporal hallucination, so to speak, a modest (o)shared(i) hallucination (on the one hand 'it is not there,' on the other 'but it has indeed been'): a mad image, chafed by reality.”

IfsHandsRealityFormSpeakLevelsExistenceFiguresPerceptionEvidenceMadPhotographMediumsModestBizarreLoadedConversesHallucinations
Author:Roland Barthes
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“He lifted his gaze to the framed photograph of Tanya and him taken on their wedding day. God, she had been lovely. Her smile had come through her eyes straight from her heart. He had known unequivocally that she loved him. He believed to this day that she had died knowing that he loved her. How could she not know? He had dedicated his life to never letting her doubt it.”

KnowsHeartEyeKnownKnowingTakenDoubtDiedPhotographLovelyThis DayDedicatedHer EyesFramedWedding DayHer Smile
Author:Sandra Brown
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“Inside the house, I turned on the kitchen light, revealing the photographs stuck every which way all over the cabinets, and then switched on the hall light. In my head, I heard Beck say to my small nine-year-old self, 'Why do we need every light in the house on? Are you signaling to aliens?”

WayNeedsYearsSelfLightHouseHeardPhotographStuckNineAliensKitchenHallsRevealingCabinetsNine YearsOld Self
Book:Shiver Trilogy (Shiver, Linger, Forever)
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“Photographers tend not to photograph what they can’t see, which is the very reason one should try to attempt it. Otherwise we’re going to go on forever just photographing more faces and more rooms and more places. Photography has to transcend description. It has to go beyond description to bring insight into the subject, or reveal the subject, not as it looks, but how does it feel?”

FeelsShouldTryingLooksDoeReasonFacesRoomsForeverSubjectsGoes OnPhotographyPhotographerPhotographInsightDescription
Author:Duane Michals
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