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Photography Quotes

Browse 3249 quotes about Photography.

Photography Quotes

“Look at the things around you, the immediate world around you. If you are alive, it will mean something to you, and if you care enough about photography, and if you know how to use it, you will want to photograph that meaningness. If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own, you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph.”

People Ifs Knows World Want Looks Mean Enough Use Care Common Vision Know How Alive Achieve Photography Photograph Worthless If You Care Pictorial

Author:Paul Strand

“When van Gogh paints sunflowers, he reveals, or achieves, the vivid relation between himself, as man, and the sunflower, as sunflower, at that quick moment of time. His painting does not represent the sunflower itself. We shall never know what the sunflower itself is. And the camera will visualize the sunflower far more perfectly than van Gogh can.”

Knows Men Doe Moments Achieve Painting Photography Relation Cameras Paint Vans Vivid Sunflower

Book:Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)

Source: Delphi Complete Works of D.H. Lawrence (Illustrated)

“The invention of photography has dealt a mortal blow to the old modes of expression, in painting as well as in poetry, where automatic writing, which appeared at the end of the nineteenth century, is a true photography of thought. Since a blind instrument now assured artists of achieving the aim they had set themselves up to that time, they now aspired, not without recklessness, to break with the imitation of appearances.”

Writing Wells Ends Artist Break Achieve Century Painting Expression Photography Aim Instruments Blind Blow Appearance Invention Mortals Imitation Assured Nineteenth Century Recklessness

Author:Andre Breton

“The essential factor in the transition of the baroque to photography is not the perfecting of a physical process... rather does it lie in a psychological fact, to wit, in completely satisfying our appetite for illusion by a mechanical reproduction in the making of which man plays not part. The solution is not to be found in the result achieved, but in the way of achieving it.”

Men Way Doe Play Facts Lying Found Process Results Achieve Essentials Photography Solutions Illusion Wit Psychological Factors Transition Appetite Satisfying Reproduction Baroque

Author:Andre Bazin

“Photography isolates the world via an aperture and gives the photographer the means to see differently, to achieve a spontaneous vision that is direct and uncompromising.”

World Giving Mean Vision Achieve Photography Direct Photographer Spontaneous Uncompromising Aperture

Author:Ellsworth Kelly

“The decisive moment, the popular Henri Cartier-Bresson approach to photography in which a scene is stopped and depicted at a certain point of high visual drama, is now possible to achieve at any time. One's photographs, years later, may be retroactively rephotographed by repositioning the photographer or the subject of the photograph, or by adding elements that were never there before but now are made to exist concurrently in a newly elastic sense of space and time.”

Source: In our own image: the coming revolution in photography : how computer technology is changing our view of the world

“There is no such thing as the perfect picture. That's the challenge of photography. I was always striving for perfection, even though I knew I could never achieve it. But it kept me reaching for something.”

Challenges Perfect Achieve Photography Perfection Strive Reaching Striving For Perfection

Author:Phil Stern

“I never had any ambition to do anything commercial, anything journalistic. I wanted to be an artist, and I wanted to be an artist whose work was done in the medium of photography. It may be debatable to this day whether I ever succeeded in achieving that ambition, but the point is, I never had any uncertainty about that.”

Done Artist Achieve Ambition Photography Uncertainty This Day

Author:Lewis Baltz

“My first priority when taking pictures is to achieve clarity. A good documentary photograph transmits the information of the situation with the utmost fidelity; achieving it means understanding the nuances of lighting and composition, and also remembering to keep the lenses clean and the cameras steady.”

“But I did not always know just what it was I wanted to photograph. I believe it is important for a photographer to discover this, for unless he finds what it is that excites him, what it is that calls forth at once an emotional response, he is unlikely to achieve his best work.”

Knows Believe Important Wanted I Believe Achieve Emotional Photography Response Photographer Photograph Unlikely Best Work Emotional Response

Book:Camera in London

Source: Camera in London

“It is essential for the photographer to know the effect of his lenses. The lens is his eye, and it makes or ruins his pictures. A feeling for composition is a great asset. I think it is very much a matter of instinct. It can perhaps be developed, but I doubt if it can be learned. To achieve his best work, the young photographer must discover what really excites him visually. He must discover his own world.”

Source: Bill Brandt: Selected Texts & Bibliography