Best Photograph Quotes | Short & Famous Sayings Page 42

“Black and White is essentially an abstract way to interpret and transform what one might refer to as reality. My purpose in taking photographs over the past forty years has ultimately been about defining myself. It has been fundamentally a psychological and existential journey.”

Way Years Has Beens Reality Might Past Purpose Black White Journey Photograph Psychological Abstract Forty Black And White Existential Defining Over The Past Defining Myself

Author:Roger Ballen

“I once saw a photograph of a large herd of wild elephants in Central Africa Seeing an airplane for the first time, and all in a state of wild collective terror... As, however, there were no journalists among them, the terror died down when the airplane was out of sight.”

Firsts States Funny Saws Seeing First Time Sight Died Photograph Terror Journalism Journalist Collectives Airplane Elephants Herds

Author:Bertrand Russell

“There are wonderful museums with lots of photographs of 1920's musicals.”

Wonderful Photograph Museums

Author:Julie Harris

“I fall in love with almost every person I photograph. I want to hear their stories. I want to get close. This is personal for me.”

Fall Falling In Love Photograph I Fall In Love

Author:Stephanie Sinclair

“When I ask to photograph someone, it is because I love the way they look and I think I make that clear. I'm paying them a tremendous compliment. What I'm saying is, I want to take you home with me and look at you for the rest of my life.”

Thinking Way Want Looks Home Asks Clear Photograph Compliment

Author:Amy Arbus

“Most of the photographs I make are personal pictures and never end up in print. Even the magazines I shoot for on assignment publish very few of the actual selects. Sometimes these personal pictures will end up in a book of my work. Oftentimes, however, they are simply photographs which I hope resonate, yet rarely find a publication home. I do a lot of personal work in Rio de Janeiro, and this of a parkour artist making a jump on Ipanema Beach is such a moment.”

Book Ends Sometimes Moments Home Artist Photograph Magazines Beach Print Publish Publication Assignments Rio Parkour Rio De Janeiro

Author:David Alan Harvey

“[The Library of Congress] is a multimedia encyclopedia. These are the tentacles of a nation. [Referring to the diverse holdings of the library, including motion pictures, photographs, recordings, posters and other historic objects which collectively far outnumber the books]”

Book Science Nations Objects Library Including Photograph Congress Diverse Historic Posters Referring Motion Pictures Encyclopedia Tentacles Multimedia

Author:Daniel J. Boorstin

“Many of the critics today get airline tickets, hotel accommodation, bags, beautiful photographs, gifts and other expenses paid by the distributors, and then are supposed to write serious articles about the movie.”

Writing Today Beautiful Serious Paid Critics Photograph Bags Hotel Expenses Articles Tickets Airline Accommodations Distributors Airline Ticket

Author:Wim Wenders

“Liberman said to me, 'I must cut back on the work you do for Vogue. The editors don't like it. They say the photographs burn on the page . After some years, I began to understand that what they wanted of me was simply a nice, sweet, clean-looking image of a lovely young woman.”

Love Years Said Age Wanted Young Nice Cutting Sweet Pages Clean Photograph Lovely Editors Young Women Vogue Nice Sweet

Author:Irving Penn

“Photographers who come up with power never get accused of imitating anyone else even though they photograph the same broom, same street, same portraits.”

Streets Photographer Photograph Come Up Portraits Accused Imitating Brooms

Author:Minor White

“When I looked at things for what they are I was fool enough to persist in my folly and found that each photograph was a mirror of my Self.”

Self Enough Found Fool Mirrors Photographer Photograph Folly Persist

Author:Minor White

“I have often photographed when I am not in tune with nature but the photographs look as if I had been. So I conclude that something in nature says, 'Come and take my photograph.' So I do, regardless of how I feel.”

Ifs Feels Looks Photographer Photograph Tunes

Author:Minor White

“You have to see a building to comprehend it. Photographs cannot convey the experience, nor film.”

Film Artist Building Photograph

Author:Arthur Erickson

“Having photographs around the house is fine - if they're royal and on the grand piano.”

Ifs House Fine Photograph Piano Royal Upper Class Old Money

Author:Nicholas Haslam

“To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.”

“Photographers - idiots, of which there are so many - say, "Oh, if only I had a Nikon or a Leica, I could make great photographs." That's the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. It's nothing but a matter of seeing, and thinking, and interest.”

Ifs Thinking Matter Interest Seeing Heard Photography Photographer Photograph Idiot Leica Nikon

Author:Andreas Feininger

“Every successful photograph, except for lucky shots, begins with an idea and a plan. The more precisely a photographer knows what it is he wishes to do, the better the chances are that he will do it.”

Knows Ideas Wish Chance Successful Plans Lucky Photography Shots Photographer Photograph Chances Are

Author:Andreas Feininger

“If history were a photograph of the past it would be flat and uninspiring. Happily, it is a painting; and, like all works of art, it fails of the highest truth unless imagination and ideas are mixed with the paints.”

Ifs Art Ideas Would Be Past Imagination History Failing Painting Highest Paint Photograph Flats Works Of Art Uninspiring

Book:Allan Nevins on history

Source: Allan Nevins on history

“I got a lot of flak originally for writing with photographs, because the great cliche in photography is that one photograph is worth a thousand words, and photographers are usually dodo birds anyway.”

Writing Thousand Photography Bird Photographer Photograph Cliche Dodo Bird

Author:Duane Michals

“Black and white is a very minimalist art form and unlike color photographs does not pretend to mimic the world in a manner similar to the way the human eye might perceive... Black and white is essentially an abstract way to interpret and transform what one might refer to as reality.”

World Way Humans Doe Art Reality Might Eye Form Black White Color Photograph Perceive Abstract Black And White Minimalist Human Eyes

Author:Roger Ballen

“I write in order to express what the photo itself cannot say. A photograph of my father doesn't tell me what I thought of him, which for me is much more important than what the man looked like.”

Men Writing Important Order Father He Man Photograph

Author:Duane Michals

“I suspect it is for one’s self-interest that one looks at one’s surroundings and one’s self. This search is personally born and is indeed my reason and motive for making photographs. The camera is not merely a reflecting pool and the photographs are not exactly the mirror, mirror on the wall that speaks with a twisted tongue. Witness is borne and puzzles come together at the photographic moment which is very simple and complete. The mind-finger presses the release on the silly machine and it stops time and holds what its jaws can encompass and what the light will stain.”

“I agree that all good photographs are documents, but I also know that all documents are certainly not good photographs. Furthermore, a good photographer does not merely document, he probes the subject, he 'uncovers' it.”

Knows Doe Subjects Agree Photographer Photograph Documents

Author:Berenice Abbott

“Nothing speaks louder than an evocative photograph that stirs the imagination, tugs at the heart strings and engages the mind.”

Mind Heart Speak Imagination Photograph Strings Heart Strings

Author:Mark Carwardine

“In assembling this group of portraits of women, I'm aware that I'm treading on dangerous ground. When I was in college, I learned to be distrustful of men's depictions of women. I remember seeing Garry Winogrand's book Women Are Beautiful in the school library and being shocked that it hadn't been defaced for its blatant objectification of women. But looking back, maybe I was too harsh. Whether one photographs men or women, it is always a form of objectification. Whatever you say about Winogrand, his depiction was honest.”

“The Winter Photograph was my Ariadne, not because it would help me discover a secret thing (monster or treasure), but because it would tell me what constituted that thread which drew me toward Photography. I had understood that henceforth I must interrogate the evidence of Photography, not from the viewpoint of pleasure, but in relation to what we romantically call love and death.”

Helping Pleasure Secret Photography Understood Evidence Relation Winter Photograph Monsters Treasure Help Me Thread Viewpoints Love And Death Ariadne

Author:Roland Barthes

“The unary Photograph has every reason to be banal, 'unity' of composition being the first rule of vulgar (and notably, of academic) rhetoric: 'The subject,' says one handbook for amateur photographers, 'must be simple, free of useless accessories; this is called the Search for Unity.”

Firsts Reason Simple Subjects Unity Photographer Photograph Useless Academic Composition Rhetoric Vulgar Accessories

Author:Roland Barthes

“One of the marks of our world is perhaps this reversal: we live according to a generalized image-repertoire. Consider the United Sates, where everything is transformed into images: only images exist and are produced and are consumes ... Such a reversal necessarily raises the ethical question: not that the image is immoral, irreligious, or diabolic (as some have declared it, upon the advent of the Photograph), but because, when generalized, it completely de-realizes the human world of conflicts and desires, under cover of illustrating it.”

World Humans Desire Realizing United Conflict Mark Raises Photograph Our World Ethical Transformed Immoral Advent Reversal Illustrating Ethical Questions

Author:Roland Barthes

“A photograph must come from imagination and not be a reflection of what is.”

Imagination Reflection Photograph

Author:Thierry Mugler

“When I saw photographs of children murdered by the Fascist, I felt furious pity. When the supporters of Franco talked of Red atrocities, I merely felt indignant that people should tell such lies. In the first case I saw corpses, in the second only words. . . I gradually acquired a certain horror of the way in which my own mind worked. It was clear to me that unless I cared about every murdered child impartially, I did not really care about children being murdered at all.”

People Way Should Mind Firsts Children Care Lying Certain Felt My Own Cases Clear Saws Horror Red Photograph Pity I Care Supporter Corpses Fascists Atrocities Furious Franco Indignant

Author:Stephen Spender

“Take pictures all the time. Don't worry if you take a bad photograph; you learn more by taking a bad picture than a good one. If you don't like it, study it and figure out why you don't like it. You'll learn from your mistake.”

Ifs Mistake Worry Study Figures Photograph Learn From Your Mistakes

Author:Patrick Demarchelier

“It became the middle finger I couldn’t raise in PR photographs. The mustache became my silent last word in the verbal battles I was losing with higher headquarters on rules, targets, and fighting the war.”

Source: Fighter Pilot: The Memoirs of Legendary Ace Robin Olds

“I have been a photographer all my life....and have made photographs of many things and for many reasons. But one thing that becomes more and more apparent is that I am simply only as good as my next photograph. That's the one that counts the most....For this reason I find it a delight to face a new day, and to develop that new roll of film. It's a great way to live.”

Way Has Beens Made Reason Film Faces Next One Thing Photographer Photograph Delight New Day Way To Live

Author:Ralph Gibson

“Taking photographs and writing is my way of saying I was here, I saw this, I felt this, I heard this.”

Way Writing Felt Saws Heard Photograph My Way

Author:Duane Michals

“When people call me a photographer, I always feel like something of a charlatan—at least in Japanese. The word shashin, for photograph, combines the characters sha, meaning to reflect or copy, and shin, meaning truth, hence the photographer seems to entertain grand delusions of portraying truth.”

People Feels Character Seems Photographer Photograph Delusion Call Me Copies Like Something Charlatans Portraying

Author:Hiroshi Sugimoto

“One night I had an idea while I was at the movies: to photograph the film itself. I tried to imagine photographing an entire feature film with my camera. I could already picture the projection screen making itself visible as a white rectangle. In my imagination, this would appear as a glowing, white rectangle; it would come forward from the projection surface and illuminate the entire theater. This idea struck me as being very interesting, mysterious, and even religious.”

“There have to be at least two copies of a photograph, otherwise it’s not a photograph.”

Two Photograph Copies

Author:Thomas Ruff

“Just imagine the banner headlines if a marine biologist were to discover a species of dolphin that wove large, intricately meshed fishing nets, twenty dolphin-lengths in diameter! Yet we take a spider web for granted, as a nuisance in the house rather than as one of the wonders of the world. And think of the furore if Jane Goodall returned from Gombe stream with photographs of wild chimpanzees building their own houses, well roofed and insulated, of painstakingly selected stones neatly bonded and mortared! Yet caddis larvae, who do precisely that, command only passing interest.”

“If you make an honest picture of war, it will be an antiwar photograph.”

Ifs War Honest Photograph Antiwar

Author:James Nachtwey

“It is a great honor for me to be compared to Henri Cartier-BressonBut I believe there is a very big difference in the way we put ourselves inside the stories we photograph. He always strove for the decisive moment as being the most important. I always work for a group of pictures, to tell a story. If you ask which picture in a story I like most, it is impossible for me to tell you this. I don't work for an individual picture. If I must select one individual picture for a client, it is very difficult for me.”

Ifs Way Believe Important Moments Stories Bigs Asks Individual I Believe Difficult Differences Impossible Groups Honor Photographer Photograph Clients Select Decisive Moments Cartier

Author:Sebastiao Salgado

“My photographs are subjective and personal-they’r e intended to be accessible, to relate to people’s lives... People-their well-being and survival-are the crux of what’s important to me.”

People Wells Important Survival Photograph Relate Well Being Subjective What's Important Crux

Author:Roy DeCarava

“Our self illusion is so interwoven with personal memories that when we recall an event, we believe we are retrieving a reliable episode from our history like opening a photograph album and examining a snapshot in time. If we then discover the episode never really happened, then our whole self is called into question. But that's only because we are so committed to the illusion that our self is a reliable story in the first place.”

Ifs Firsts Believe Self Whole Stories Memories Happened Events Illusion Photograph Committed Albums Opening Episodes Recalls Examining Snapshots

Book:The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity

Source: The Self Illusion: How the Social Brain Creates Identity

“A window covered with raindrops interests me more than a photograph of a famous person.”

Persons Art Interest Beauty Photography Window Photograph Covered Portraits Raindrops

Author:Saul Leiter

“Film can express things that computers never will. Film is a series of photographs separated by split seconds of darkness. Film is light and shadow.”

Light Film Darkness Computer Shadow Series Photograph Seconds Splits Light And Shadow

Book:The Flick

Source: The Flick

“No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.”

Source: Station Eleven: A novel

“I was not a Southern California girl. I hated having my photograph taken. I felt shy and embarrassed around famous people.”

People Girl Felt Taken Photograph Hated California Shy Southern Embarrassed Southern California California Girls

Author:Allegra Huston

“Light is everything in photographs and has to be considered in all situations.”

Light Situation Photograph

Author:Catherine Opie

“I always give a print to everybody I photograph, and some of my subjects have told me they have a hard time hanging them up at home.”

Giving Hard Home Subjects Photograph Hard Times Print

Author:Catherine Opie

“The reason I call myself a documentary photographer is the idea of how photographs contain and participate in history.”

Ideas Reason Photographer Photograph Documentaries

Author:Catherine Opie

“I continue to hope and believe that the best stories and photographs are yet to occur. My quest for them will certainly require that I keep my head up and my eyes and heart open as I walk down the street.”

Believe Heart Stories Eye Walks Streets Photograph Quests Heads Up

Author:Peter Turnley

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Photograph Quotes