Best Photograph Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 4

“The photograph, now they are detached from their original surroundings, they are involved in a close world in which they only relate to each other: all the rest of 'reality' has vanished. This allows us to see those elements from a new point of view and perhaps to reach a better understanding.”

World Reality Understanding Views Involved Elements Originals Photograph Point Of View Relate Surroundings Detached

Author:Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

“I was working with mud and photographs and thread, eyelashes, carrots and acetone... I was throwing radios off buildings and... remember floating styrofoam commas down the Milwaukee River.”

Remember Building Materials Rivers Photograph Radio Throwing Thread Mud Floating Carrots Eyelashes Milwaukee Styrofoam

Book:William Wegman, l'oeuvre photographique

Source: William Wegman, l'oeuvre photographique

“Man Ray... loved games and absolutely knew about the camera. It is interesting to note that, although I used him in only about 10 percent of the photographs and videotapes, most people think of him as omnipresent in my work. It irked me sometimes to be known only as the guy with the dog, but on the other hand it was a thrill to have a famous dog.”

People Thinking Men Sometimes Hands Used Guy Games Interesting Known Dog Percent Cameras Notes Photograph Working It Rays Thrill

Author:William Wegman

“In 1978 I decided not to work with Man Ray as an act of self-discipline. I didn't want to rely on him. Man Ray hated not working, though. He would come into my studio, see me drawing or working on photographs, and just slump down at my feet with a big sigh. Fortunately for both of us the year ended. Polaroid had invented a new camera, the twenty-by-twenty-four, and I was invited to Cambridge, Mass., to experiment with it. Naturally, I took Man Ray and we were working again.”

Men Want Years Self Bigs Four Feet Discipline Mass Decided Twenties Cameras Photograph Studios Drawing Experiments Hated Rely Rays Self Discipline Sigh Invited Cambridge Slumps Polaroids

Author:William Wegman

“So long as people expect paintings to be simply coloured photographs they get no individuality and, in the case of portraits, no characterisation.”

People Long Cases Painting Photograph Individuality Portraits

Author:William Dobell

“Documentary photography is becoming more illustrative as people become more familiar with photography’s limitations and vulnerabilities. Reality has always been interpreted through layers of manipulation, abstraction, and intervention. But now, it is very much on the surface. I like this honesty about its dishonesty. Every photograph has many truths and none. Photographs are ambiguous, no matter how seemingly scientific they appear to be. They are always subject to an uncontrollable context. This is a tired statement, but worth repeating.”

“I find the whole concept of being 'SEXY' embarrassing and confusing. If I do an interview with photographs people desperately want to change me- dye my hair blonder, pluck my eyebrows. Then there's the choice of clothes. I know everyone wants a picture of me in a mini skirt, BUT THATS NOT ME. I feel uncomfortable. I'd never go out in a mini skirt. Personally, I don't actually think it's even that sexy. Whats sexy about saying, 'I'm here with my boobs out and a short skirt, have a look at everything I've got?' My idea of sexy is that less is more. The LESS you reveal the MORE people can wonder.”

“Usually I think if there is something imperfect in a photograph it makes the picture more real. Photographs that are slick, smooth, and imperfect seem less honest to me.”

Ifs Thinking Real Seems Honest Photograph Imperfect Smooth Slick

Book:Pictures under discussion

Source: Pictures under discussion

“Should you be a teenager blessed with uncommon good looks, document this state of affairs by the taking of photographs. It is the only way anyone will ever believe you in years to come.”

Way Should Years Believe Looks States Blessed Photograph Affair Teenager Documents Looking Good Common Good Uncommon

Book:The Fran Lebowitz Reader

Source: The Fran Lebowitz Reader

“If a painting of a tree was only the exact representation of the original, so that it looked just like the tree, there would be no reason for making it; we might as well look at the tree itself. But the painting, if it is of the right sort, gives something that neither a photograph nor a view of the tree conveys. It emphasizes something of character, quality, individuality. We are not lost in looking at thorns and defects; we catch a vision of the grandeur and beauty of a king of the forest.”

“Forbes magazine has named Mel Gibson this year's most powerful celebrity. ... Forbes' least powerful celebrity? [Miller displayed the widely circulated image from the Lynndie England photographs of a hooded Iraqi prisoner with wires attached to his outstretched arms] You're looking at him. Screw this guy. ... [He's a] bad guy.”

Years Guy Powerful Arms England Photograph Magazines Most Powerful Prisoner Screws This Guy Bad Guys Wire Forbes

Author:Dennis Miller

“If you look at a photograph, and you think, 'My isn't that a beautiful photograph,' and you go on to the next one, or 'Isn't that nice light?' so what? I mean what does it do to you or what's the real value in the long run? What do you walk away from it with? I mean, I'd much rather show you a photograph that makes demands on you, that you might become involved in on your own terms or be perplexed by.”

Ifs Thinking Looks Mean Long Doe Real Shows Light Might Running Beautiful Values Next Term Walks Nice Goes On Involved Demand Photograph Long Runs The Next One Real Value Perplexed

Author:Duane Michals

“There is no recipe for good layout, what must be maintained is a feeling of change and contrast. A layout man should be simple with good photographs. He should perform acrobatics when the pictures are bad.”

Men Should Feelings Simple Photograph Contrast Recipes Layout Acrobatics

Author:Alexey Brodovitch

“Average Jones had come by his nickname inevitably. His parents had foredoomed him to it when they furnished him with the initials A. V. R. E. as preface to his birthright of J for Jones. His character apparently justified the chance concomitance. He was, so to speak, a composite photograph of any thousand well-conditioned, clean-living Americans between the ages of twenty-five and thirty.”

Wells Character Age Speak Parent Chance Five Thousand Twenties Clean Photograph Average Thirty Justified Initials Twenty Five Birthright Nicknames Composites Clean Living

Book:Average Jones

Source: Average Jones

“The only hope I had was when (in his youth)I saw one day a photograph of a sculpture by Wilhelm Lehmbruck, a German sculptor of expressionistic style. This was perhaps the only example, Lehmbruck, between my sixteenth to nineteenth years in which I saw a possibility for art to be principally of interest to innovate some things, instead of writing a very boring, naturalistic repetition of what is already done by nature.”

Writing Years Art Done Interest Saws Style Example Possibility Youth One Day Photograph Boring Repetition Sculpture Sculptors

Author:Joseph Beuys

“A photograph acquires something of the dignity which it ordinarily lacks when it ceases to be a reproduction of reality and shows us things that no longer exist.”

Shows Reality Photography Dignity Photograph Cease Acquire Reproduction

Book:Remembrance of Things Past

Source: Remembrance of Things Past

“Mark Tobey fills his canvases with elliptical, calligraphic lines, beautiful whirls that seem at first glance to be completely abstract and to come from nowhere at all except his own subjective musing. But I shall never forget how struck I was, on visiting Tobey's studio one day, to see strewn around books on astronomy and photographs of the Milky Way. I knew then that Tobey experiences the movement of the stars and solar constellations as the external pole of his encounter.”

“The modern artist is living in a mechanical age and we have a mechanical means of representing objects in nature such as the camera and photograph. The modern artist, it seems to me, is working and expressing an inner world - in other words - expressing the energy , the motion and the other inner forces ... the modern artist is working with space and time , and expressing his feelings rather than illustrating.”

World Mean Feelings Seems Age Artist Energy Force Space Modern Objects Cameras Photograph Time And Space Representing Inner World Modern Art Illustrating

Author:Jackson Pollock

“I love irony in pictures. There's one photograph from Vietnam by Philip Jones Griffiths that shows a very large GI having his pocket picked by a tiny Vietnamese woman. It told the whole story of the clash of two cultures and how the invader could never win.”

Two Whole Stories Shows Culture Winning Photograph Tiny Irony Pockets Vietnam Clash Philip Vietnamese Invaders Gis Two Cultures

Author:John Pilger

“Photography today is so accurate and so good that it's really so much easier just to take photographs and work from them.”

Today Easier Photography Photograph Accurate

Author:Paul Emsley

“Photographs and reality are just night and day. In reality, the information is all there. A photograph is just kind of a hint.”

Kind Reality Night Information Photography Photograph Hints

Author:Nelson Shanks

“I would warn very sincerely against the pitfalls of copying photographs. A frozen, split-second bears little relationship to the continuing process of living reality. It is better to look, look again, and keep on looking.”

Looks Littles Reality Process Bears Photography Photograph Splits Continuing Frozen Sincerely Copying Pitfalls Living Reality

Author:Keith Shackleton

“For each final photograph, I'll have shot loads of film. I suppose people don't see all that. But when someone looks at a piece of work, they know something has gone into it, even if they can't lay their finger on what it is.”

People Ifs Knows Looks Film Gone Pieces Shots Lays Fingers Finals Photograph Load

Author:Catherine Yass

“I always sent my mother all these huge books I made. When my mother died, I was cleaning her cupboard, and these big books were only 20 pages long. She edited out, maybe burned, every single photograph where I'm naked.”

Long Made Book Bigs Mother Huge Pages Died Photograph Naked Burned Cleaning Edited Cupboards Mother Died Big Book

Author:Marina Abramovic

“Now that you are dead, you are splendid. Photographs of people who have just died are worth twenty percent more, and for suicides there is an additional five percent. Now that you are dead you are much in demand.”

People Five Demand Percent Died Twenties Suicide Photograph Splendid

Author:Kobo Abe

“Composition in photography is almost as varied as composition in music or words -- melodic or atonal, safe or daring -- and can enhance subject, theme, and style. Every photograph you take involves you in some compositional decision, even if this is simply where to set up the camera or when to press the button.”

Ifs Decision Subjects Style Safe Photography Cameras Presses Photograph Theme Daring Composition Buttons

Book:Basic Photography

Source: Basic Photography

“Northern Ireland is part of Ireland, not Britain, as can clearly be seen from aerial photographs.”

Photograph Britain Ireland Northern Ireland

Author:Jeremy Hardy

“I will look through 200 photographs of Kate Moss and there will be just one that I connect with for some reason, maybe because of the composition or something in the eye... Something touches me and I know I have to paint it, in the way a child knows it wants something.”

Knows Way Want Looks Children Reason Eye Paint Photograph Just One Composition Want Something Kate Moss Touch Me

Author:Stella Vine

“Since 1970, I've been using text and ephemera as well as photographs in order to tell stories of one kind or another. There's a thread that runs through all the work that is to do with bearing witness. The photographs are about asking questions, though, not answering them.”

Wells Kind Stories Running Order Asking Photograph Witness Thread Asking Questions Bearing Witness Ephemera

Author:Jim Goldberg

“Research material can turn up anywhere - in a dusty old letter in an archive, a journal or some old photographs you find in a charity shop.”

Turns Materials Research Letters Charity Photograph Shops Journal Archives Old Photographs Old Letters

Author:Sara Sheridan

“... to became neighbours and friends instead of journalists. This is the way to make your finest photographs.”

Way Photographer Photograph Journalist Finest Neighbour

Author:W. Eugene Smith

“It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing-and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite - that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that.”

Source: Delphi Complete Works of Mark Twain (Illustrated)

“A photograph is a universe of dots. The grain, the halide, the little silver things clumped in the emulsion. Once you get inside a dot, you gain access to hidden information, you slide into the smallest event. This is what technology does. It peels back the shadows and redeems the dazed and rumbling past. It makes reality come true.”

Littles Doe Reality Past Universe Technology Events Information Photography Shadow Gains Photograph Access Silver Grain Smallest Slides Dots Dazed

Book:Underworld: A Novel

Source: Underworld: A Novel

“With a painting, you're taking basic building blocks and making something that's more complex than what you started with. It is a synthetic process. A photograph does the opposite: It takes the world, and puts an order on it, simplifies it.”

World Doe Order Process Building Painting Photography Opposites Complexes Photographer Photograph Block Simplify Building Blocks Synthetic

Author:Stephen Shore

“Yet another spunky li'l NASA robot lands and begins transmitting back photographs of rocks that appear virtually identical to the rock photos beamed back by all the other spunky li'l NASA robots, thus confirming suspicions that the universe has a LOT of rocks in it.”

Funny Science Universe Land Rocks Photograph Suspicion Robots Identical Nasa

Book:Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far)

Source: Dave Barry's History of the Millennium (So Far)

“The photographs that are art have to be separated from the rest - then preserved.”

Art Artist Photograph

Author:Robert Mapplethorpe

“When the young Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were growing up, that was at it's height and the War cemented that with photographs of the Royal Family having breakfast together and so on, by pinning their reputation so firmly on that particular issue.”

War Together Young Literature Growing Up Issues Growing Particular Photograph Reputation Height Breakfast Princess Royal Royal Family

Author:Anthony Holden

“Photographs are still being taken but aren't being shown. There's one of a skeleton bound at the wrists with pants still around its ankles; if it was a woman, she was likely raped; if it was a man, he was possibly castrated.”

Ifs Men Stills Literature Taken Bounds Photograph Pants Wrists Skeletons Ankles

Author:Nicholas D. Kristof

“I don't like to reminisce much, and my walls don't have photographs of me and the actors I was with, or any of that stuff... I try and keep that disciplined, and just work. There are so many traps you can get into, and looking back on your own work is certainly one of them.”

Trying Actors Stuff Wall Photograph Looking Back Traps Reminiscing

Author:Woody Allen

“Still photographs often differ from life more by their silence than by the immobility of their subjects. Landscape pictures tend to converge with life, however, on summer nights, when the sounds outside, after we call in children and close garage doors, are small - the whir of moths, the snap of a stick.”

Children Stills Night Sound Silence Doors Subjects Summer Sticks Photograph Landscape Snaps Garage Moths Summer Nights

Author:Robert Adams

“Dialectical thought is related to vulgar thinking in the same way that a motion picture is related to a still photograph. The motion picture does not outlaw the still photograph but combines a series of them according to the laws of motion.”

Thinking Way Doe Stills Law Series Photograph Related Vulgar Outlaw Motion Pictures Laws Of Motion

Book:Problems of everyday life, and other writings on culture & science

Source: Problems of everyday life, and other writings on culture & science

“The pictures from the first professional photo session that the young David Beckham submitted himself to are extraordinary. He has a barely suppressed smile, as though he and the cameraman are complicit in the understanding that this is not yet David Beckham we see and that there is an element of deceit in selling the photographs as such”

Firsts Young Understanding Elements Extraordinary Photograph Selling Deceit Session Beckham Cameraman

Book:On Beckham

Source: On Beckham

“Excellent anthology... a celebration of our goodness and our potential for growth. The sense of celebration is stretched by the beautiful photographs.”

Beautiful Growth Goodness Photograph Excellent Celebration Anthology

Author:Joseph C Zinker

“Sometimes you remember your life in photographs that were never taken.”

Sometimes Remember Taken Photograph

Book:Trumpet: Picador Classic

Source: Trumpet: Picador Classic

“As time went by we developed a sort of ideology without ever formulating it as such. I've always said that we are documenting the sacred buildings of Calvinism. Calvinism rejects all forms of art and therefore never developed its own architecture. The buildings we photograph originate directly from this purely economical thinking.”

Thinking Art Said Form Building Sacred Photograph Architecture Ideology Rejects Calvinism

Author:Bernd Becher

“A Company should be viewed as an unfolding movie, not as a still photograph”

Should Stills Company Photograph Unfolding

Author:Warren Buffett

“there is a spirit in every home, a sort of composite spirit composed of the thoughts and feelings of the members of the family as a composite photograph is formed of the features of different individuals.”

Different Feelings Home Spirit Individual Family Members Photograph Features Thoughts And Feelings Composites

Book:Laura Ingalls Wilder, farm journalist: writings from the Ozarks

Source: Laura Ingalls Wilder, farm journalist: writings from the Ozarks

“Images anesthetize. An event known through photographs certainly becomes more real than it would have been if one had never seen the photographs ... But after repeated exposure to images it also becomes less real. ... 'concerned' photography has done at least as much to deaden conscience as to arouse it.”

Ifs Has Beens Real Done Known Events Photography Conscience Concerned Photograph Exposure

Author:Susan Sontag

“Paintings invariably sum up; photographs usually do not. Photographic images are pieces of evidence in an ongoing biography or history. And one photograph, unlike one painting, implies that there will be others.”

Pieces Painting Photography Evidence Photograph Biographies Ongoing

Book:A Susan Sontag reader

Source: A Susan Sontag reader

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Photograph Quotes