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Photography Quotes

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Photography Quotes

“I like to work in the real world, so I do a lot of searching or just simple looking. But I'm not above tweaking reality and making something up. I don't think there are any rules in art. It's not so much what you see as it is the significance you, the artist, see in it.”

Thinking World Art Real Reality Artist Simple Photography Significance Real World

Author:Keith Carter

“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.”

“Over the years, photography has been to me what a journal is to a writer - a record of things seen and experienced, moments in the flow of time, documents of significance to me, experiments in seeing.”

Years Has Beens Moments Records Seeing Photography Flow Experiments Significance Documents Journal

Book:In plain sight: the photographs of Beaumont Newhall

Source: In plain sight: the photographs of Beaumont Newhall

“The task of a philosophy of photography is to reflect upon [the] possibility of freedom - and thus its significance - in a world dominated by apparatuses; to reflect upon the way in which, despite everything, it is possible for human beings to give significance to their lives in the face of the chance necessity of death. Such a philosophy is necessary because it is the only form of revolution left open to us.”

World Way Giving Humans Philosophy Faces Form Left Chance Human Beings Possibility Revolution Photography Tasks Despite Significance

Book:Towards a Philosophy of Photography

Source: Towards a Philosophy of Photography

“Photography, too, reduces the world to strips and rectangles; photographers scrutinize the surfaces of reality in hope of unlocking the potential for significance that is latent within them.”

World Reality Photography Photographer Surface Significance Latent Unlocking Scrutinize Rectangles

Book:Thoughts on Landscape: Collected Writings and Interviews

Source: Thoughts on Landscape: Collected Writings and Interviews

“I'm not modest about myself. I know for a fact that I am good. But good in the sense that I can put things together. I expound vociferously to students of architecture and photography, the significance of design. A photograph is a design in which you assemble thoughts in your mind.”

Knows Mind I Can Facts Together Design Students Photography Photograph Architecture Significance Modest

Author:Julius Shulman

“More and more are turning to photography as a medium of expression as well as communication. The leavening of aesthetic approaches continues. While it is too soon to define the characteristic of the photographic style today, one common denominator, rooted in tradition, seems in the ascendancy. The direct use of the camera for what it can do best, and that is the revelation, interpretation, and discovery of the world of man and of nature. The greatest challenge to the photographer is to express the inner significance through the outward form.”

“Significance is inherent in the human body.”

Humans Body Photography Significance Inherent Human Body

Author:Julia Kristeva

“It seems so utterly naive that landscape - not that of the pictorial school - is not considered of "social significance" when it has a far more important bearing on the human race of a given locale than excrescences called cities.”

Humans Important Seems School Given Social Race Cities Photography Landscape Human Race Significance Naive Pictorial

Book:The letters between Edward Weston and Willard Van Dyke

Source: The letters between Edward Weston and Willard Van Dyke

“To make images is a way of ordering one's world, of exploring and understanding one's relationship to existence. ... The images we make are often ahead of our understanding, but to say "yes" to a subject is also to have recognized, however dimly, a part of oneself; to live with that image, to accept its significance is perhaps to grow in understanding.”

World Way Grows Understanding Existence Accepting Subjects Photography Oneself Significance Exploring

Author:John Blakemore