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Photography Quotes

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Photography Quotes

“I didn't want to be criticized for taking low-quality photographs, so I tried to reach the best, highest quality of photography and then to combine this with a conceptual art practice. But thinking back, that was the wrong decision [laughs]. Developing a low-quality aesthetic is a sign of serious fine art-I still see this.”

Thinking Want Art Stills Decision Quality Practice Laughing Serious Fine Photography Highest Lows Photographer Photograph Developing Aesthetic Fine Arts Wrong Decision Conceptual Art

Author:Hiroshi Sugimoto

“The very act of representation has been so thoroughly challenged in recent years by postmodern theories that it is impossible not to see the flaws everywhere, in any practice of photography. Traditional genres in particular-journalism, documentary studies, and fine-art photography-have become shells, or forms emptied of meaning.”

“Above all, the photographs I use are not arty in any sense of the word. I think photography is dead as fine art; its only place is in the commercial world, for technical or information purposes.”

Thinking World Art Use Purpose Information Fine Photography Photograph Fine Arts

Book:Ed Ruscha and Some Los Angeles Apartments

Source: Ed Ruscha and Some Los Angeles Apartments

“Fine-art photography is a very small world associated with galleries, museums, and university art programs. It's not like rock music; the products of this world have never been widely seen because the artists are often exploring things that are not already coded in general consciousness. It's not that photographers don't want to be famous, it's just that very few of the views from the edges of culture make the mainstream. Ansel Adams was an exception.”

“What attracts me in photography is not so much a fine arts approach, but rather photographs as documents... All the ways in which human beings have documented the world in an attempt to order it, in an attempt to consume it or rule it or hang on to it in some sense.”

World Way Humans Art Order Human Beings Fine Approach Photography Photograph Documents Fine Arts

Author:Zoe Leonard

“I take pleasure in working with the non-art photographs that reside in public archives, essentially authorless and owned by the world itself, because I find the world of fine art photography to be pretty silly and pretentious.”

World Art Pleasure Fine Photography Photograph Silly Fine Arts Pretentious Archives Art Photography

Author:Michael Light

“Art photography, although long since legitimized by all the conventional discourses of fine art, seems destined perpetually to recapitulate all the rituals of the arriviste. Inasmuch as one of those rituals consists of the establishment of suitable ancestry, a search for distinguished bloodlines, it inevitably happens that photographic history and criticism are more concern with notions of tradition and continuity than with those of rupture and change.”

“Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot, others transform a yellow spot into the sun.”

Art Creativity Sun Creative Seeing Photography Painter Spots Yellow Fine Arts Artistry Famous Artist

Author:Pablo Picasso

“When I first became interested in photography, I thought it was the whole cheese. My idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don't give a hoot in hell about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself.”

Men Giving Firsts Art Ideas Whole Today Hell Fine Photography Missions Cheese Fine Arts Cheesy Hoot

Author:Edward Steichen

“A good print is really essential. I want to take strong documentary photographs that are as good technically as any of the best technical photographs, and as creative as any of the best fine-art photographs. [...] I don't want to just be a photo essayist; I'm more interested in single images...ones that I feel are good enough to stand on their own.”

Want Feels Art Enough Strong Creative Fine Essentials Photography Photographer Photograph Print Good Enough Documentaries Fine Arts Essayists

Author:Mary Ellen Mark

“Arguments against photography ever being considered a fine art are: the element of chance which enters in, — finding things ready-made for a machine to record, and of course the mechanics of the medium. I say that chance enters into all branches of art.”