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Photography Quotes

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Photography Quotes

“For me, documentary photography has always come with great responsibility. Not just to tell the story honestly and with empathy, but also to make sure the right people hear it. When you photograph somebody who is in pain or discomfort, they trust you to make sure the images will act as their advocate.”

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Author:Giles Duley

“I may be wrong, but the essential illustrative nature of most documentary photography, and the worship of the object per se, in our best nature photography, is not enough to satisfy the man of today, compounded as he is of Christ, Freud, and Marx.”

Men May Enough Today Christ Objects He Man Essentials Photography Worship Photographer Documentaries Best Nature Documentary Photography

Author:Aaron Siskind

“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.”

“Some of my pictures are poem-like in the sense that they are very condensed, haiku-lik. There are others that, if they were poetry, would be more like Ezra Pound. There is a lot of information in most of my pictures, but not the kind of information you see in documentary photography. There is emotional information in my photographs.”

Ifs Kind Would Be Information Emotional Photography Photographer Photograph Pounds Documentaries Haiku Documentary Photography

Author:Sally Mann

“Many people in this world do jobs that are dangerous and where their life is at risk and they feel that there is some kind of value to their job I guess that's how I feel about what I do. There is a social function to documentary photography that is very important and it requires people to take risks.”

People World Feels Kind Important Jobs Life Is Values Social Risk Dangerous This World Photography Function Documentaries Documentary Photography

Author:James Nachtwey

“The dismal half-baked images of the average "reportage" and "documentary" photography are self dammning... the slick manner, the slightly obscure significance, the esoteric fear of simple beauty for its own sake - I am deeply concerned with these manifestations of decay. Gene Smith's work validates my most vigorous convictions that if the documentary photographs is to be truly effective it must contain elements of art, intensity, fine craft and spirituality. All these his work contains and we may turn to his work with gratitude, appreciation and great respect.”

“I think photojournalism is documentary photography with a purpose.”

Thinking Purpose Photography Documentaries Photojournalism Documentary Photography

Author:W. Eugene Smith

“[Documentary photography] is unwittingly literary, because it is nothing other than an observation of contemporary life apprehended at the right moment by an artist capable of seizing it. (1928)”

Moments Artist Photography Capable Contemporary Observation Documentaries Right Moment Seizing Contemporary Life Documentary Photography

Author:Pierre Mac Orlan

“Documentary photography has amassed mountains of evidence. And yet... the genre has simultaneously contributed much to spectacle, to retinal excitation, to voyeurism, to terror, envy and nostalgia, and only a little to the critical understanding of the social world.”

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Book:Dismal science: photo works, 1972-1996

Source: Dismal science: photo works, 1972-1996

“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.”

“While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.”

“The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.”

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Book:Photographs of a Lifetime

Source: Photographs of a Lifetime

“If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough.”

Source: Robert Capa: cuadernos de guerra en España (1936-1939).

“One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind.”

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Book:Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field

Source: Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field

“A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.”

Life Photography Photograph Documentaries Factual Documentary Photography

Book:Photographs of a Lifetime

Source: Photographs of a Lifetime