“Part of the difficulty in trying to be both an artist and a businessperson is this: You make a picture because you have seen something beyond price; then you are to turn and assign to your record of it a cash value. If the selling is not necessarily a contradiction of the truth in the picture, it is so close to being a contradiction—and the truth is always in shades of gray-that you are worn down by the threat.” IfsTryingArtistValuesTurnsRecordsTruth IsDifficultyThreatPhotographerSellingContradictionGrayShadeCashWornShades Of Gray Book:Why People Photograph: Selected Essays and Reviews Source: Why People Photograph: Selected Essays and Reviews
“After the fall of the Soviet Union, if you start the clock, then 47 journalists, reporters, cameramen, photographers have been killed in Russia since the fall of communism. That makes it the third most deadly country on Earth to practice journalism. That's not a record to be proud of.” IfsHas BeensCountryEarthFallPracticeRecordsProudThirdsUnionsPhotographerRussiaJournalismCommunismJournalistClockSovietReportersBe ProudSoviet UnionCameraman Author:Daniel Silva
“Guys don't understand great art. They don't care that sometimes the camera has power beyond the photographer to record emotion that only the heart can see. They're threatened when the camera jumps ahead of me. Todd Kovich was pissed when I brought my Nikon to the prom, but I'd missed too many transcendent shots over the years to ever take a chance of missing one again. A prom, I told him, had a boundless supply of photogenic bozos who could be counted on to do something base.” YearsHeartArtSometimesCareGuyChanceEmotionRecordsMissingShotsCamerasPhotographerDon't CareThreatenedGreat ArtTake A ChanceBoundlessTranscendentPromPhotogenicNikon Author:Joan Bauer
“The documentary photographer aims his camera at the real world to record truthfulness. At the same time, he must strive for form, to devise effective ways of organizing and using the material. For content and form are interrelated. The problems presented by content and form must be so developed that the result is fundimentally [sic] true to the realities of life as we know it. The chief problem is to find a form that adequately represents the reality.” KnowsWorldWayRealProblemRealityFormResultsRecordsMaterialsAimCamerasStrivePhotographerChiefsReality Of LifeReal WorldDocumentariesTruthfulness Author:Paul Strand
“For this very reason I refuse all the tricks of the trade and professional virtuosity which could make me betray my career. As soon as I find a subject which interests me, I leave it to the lens to record it truthfully. Look at the reporters and at the amateur photographer! They both have only one goal; to record a memory or a document. And that is pure photography.” LooksReasonGoalInterestMemoriesCareersRecordsSubjectsPurePhotographyTradePhotographerRefuseTricksBetrayReportersDocumentsLensesVirtuosity Author:Andre Kertesz
“Photographs are never records of the way things are; they're records of the way things were.” WayRecordsPhotographerPhotograph Author:John Paul Caponigro
“All photographs are about light. The great majority of photographs record light as a way of describing objects in space. A few photographs are less about objects and more about the space that contains them. Still fewer photographs are about light itself.” WayStillsLightSpaceRecordsObjectsMajorityPhotographerPhotographFewerDescribing Author:John Paul Caponigro
“Leica, schmeica. The camera doesn't make a bit of difference. All of them can record what you are seeing. But you have to see.” BitsDifferencesRecordsSeeingPhotographyCamerasPhotographerPhotographCamera And PhotographyLeica Author:Ernst Haas
“...[the photographer] can be considered a kind of disembodied burrowing eye, a conspirator against time and its hammers. His work, print after print of it, seems to call to be shown before the decay which it portrays flattens all... Here are the records of the age before an imminent collapse.” KindSeemsEyeAgeRecordsPhotographerPrintCollapseDecayHammersConspiratorsBurrowing Author:Jack Kerouac
“...it is pretentious for photographers to believe that their pictures alone change things. If they did, we wouldn't be besieged by war, by incidents of genocide, by hunger. A more realistic assessment of photography's value is to point out that it is illustrative of what's going on, that it provides a record of history, that photographs can prompt dialogue.” IfsBelieveWarValuesRecordsPhotographyPhotographerPhotographHungerDialogueRealisticGenocideIncidentsAssessmentPretentiousPrompts Author:Eugene Richards
“Like most portrait photographers, I aim to record the instant the subject is not thinking about being photographed, striving to get beyond the practiced facial performance, reaching for something unplanned. While trying to be as objective as possible, I acknowledge that every gesture is still an act of artifice.” ThinkingTryingStillsRecordsSubjectsPerformancesAimStrivePhotographerObjectivesAcknowledgeInstantReachingGesturesPortraitsArtificeFacial Author:Martin Schoeller
“I believe it is the photographer's function to reveal that which is concealed, even if it be repugnant to the majority, not merely to record what we see around us.” IfsBelieveI BelieveRecordsFunctionMajorityPhotographerConcealed Author:Arthur Tress
“A photograph records both the thing in front of the camera and the conditions of its making... A photograph is also a document of the state of mind of the photographer. And if you were to extend the idea of the set-up photograph beyond just physically setting up the picture, I would argue that the photographer wills the picture into being.” IfsMindIdeasStatesRecordsConditionsFrontsCamerasPhotographerPhotographArguingSettingSettingsState Of MindDocuments Author:James Welling