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Photography Quotes

Browse 3249 quotes about Photography.

Photography Quotes

“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

“Photography is a transformation, not a reproduction.”

Photography Transformation Reproduction

Author:Ernst Haas

“All technical refinements discourage me. Perfect photography, larger screens, hi-fi sound, all make it possible for mediocrities slavishly to reproduce nature; and this reproduction bores me. What interests me is the interpretation of life by an artist. The personality of the film maker interests me more than the copy of an object.”

Film Artist Sound Interest Perfect Objects Personality Photography Screens Interpretation Copies Makers Mediocrity Bores Discouraging Reproduction Refinement

Author:Jean Renoir

“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 itself is most frequently nothing but the reproduction of the image that a group produces of its own integration.”

Groups Produce Photography Integration Reproduction

Author:Pierre Bourdieu

“There is something abominable about cameras, because they possess the power to invent many worlds. As an artist who has been lost in this wilderness of mechanical reproduction for many years, I do not know which world to start with. I have seen fellow artists driven to the point of frenzy by photography.”

Knows World Years Has Beens Artist Lost Photography Cameras Fellows Driven Wilderness Reproduction Frenzy

Book:Robert Smithson, the Collected Writings

Source: Robert Smithson, the Collected Writings

“In photography we possess an extraordinary instrument for reproduction. But photography is much more than that. Today it is [a method for bringing optically] some thing entirely new into the world.”

World Today Photography Method Instruments Extraordinary Reproduction

Author:Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

“So far as photography satisfied a wish, it satisfied a wish not confined to painters, but a human wish, intensifying since the Reformation, to escape subjectivity and metaphysical isolation - a wish for power to reach this world, having for so long tried, at last hopelessly, to manifest fidelity to another... Photography overcame subjectivity in a way undreamed of by painting, one which does not so much defeat the act of painting as escape it altogether: by automatism, by removing the human agent from the act of reproduction.”

World Way Humans Long Doe Lasts Wish This World Painting Photography Defeat Satisfied Painter Agents Isolation Manifest Metaphysical Confined Fidelity Reformation Reproduction Subjectivity

Author:Stanley Cavell

“Even in ordinary reproduction [photography] verges on facsimile.”

Photography Ordinary Reproduction Verge

Author:Stephen Shore

“Photography is the typical means of expression of a society founded on a civilization of technicians, conscious of the aims it has set for itself... Its power of exactly reproducing external reality, a power inherent in its technique, lends it a documentary character and makes it appear as the most faithful and impartial process for the reproduction of social life.”

Mean Character Reality Social Process Expression Civilization Photography Conscious Aim Technique Faithful Inherent Typical Documentaries Social Life Reproduction Technicians Reproducing

Author:Gisele Freund

“To do justice to modern technology's rigid linear structure, to the lofty gridwork of cranes and bridges, to the dynamism of machines operating at one thousand horsepower - only photography is capable of that. What those who are attached to the painterly style regard as photography's defect, the mechanical reproduction of form - is just what makes it superior to all other means of expression.”