Allan Sekula Quotes
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.
Quotes to Explore
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Politics is the art of achieving political goals - of achieving what is possible in a given situation - that is, in a situation that has its conditions and its limits.
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If you want your children to bring original ideas into the world, you need to let them pursue their passions, not yours.
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For an artist, a good place to be is you have some kind of influence and power to get things done, but in your essence you remain a nomad or a soldier facing a difficulty to be overcome.
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Belief is not restricted to a brief affirmation based on imitation; rather, it has degrees and stages of development. It is like a seed growing into a fully grown, fruit-bearing tree; like the sun's image in a mirror or in a drop of water to its images on the sea's surface and to the sun itself.
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It's possible to look really cute and still be comfortable. You don't have to kill your feet to have a fashionable look.
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Even the 'Negro' shows like 'Amos and Andy' and 'Beulah' are written largely by white writers - the better to preserve the stereotypes, I imagine.
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They can hop on a line and really dice it up out there.
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You always end up saying and doing such horrible things to your family, 'cause you know they're never going anywhere, and at some point, they're going to forgive you.
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I have turned off Google Alerts and don't Google my name or my pen names. I don't go on message boards. I don't read my book reviews.
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I had a year off, so my wife and I were heading to Italy to study Italian. We found a little house in a village called Atrani. I discovered that Gore Vidal lived right above us in a big house, so I sent him a note.
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I work out all the time, but because it's good for my mental state.
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It's unrealistic not to be able to indulge.
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Democratic strategists and operatives should not design a strategy based off today's conditions. They should be setting a strategy for where the trajectory of polling is headed.
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Goofy was the word that was used most often by my sisters because I've been this tall ever since I was 12 years old.
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These names: gay, queer, homosexual are limiting. I would love to finish with them. We're going to have to decide which terms to use and where we use them. For me to use the word 'queer' is a liberation; it was a word that frightened me, but no longer.
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Cholera is even more severe among populations who are immunologically naive.
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I'm not going to take a show unless I'm not sure I can do it. You have to have that sort of adrenaline.
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'Yes we can' always struck many as a naive and childish chant, like something ripped off from the Camp Fire Girls.
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I thought of such Christian inventions as the ghetto and the Jewish badge of shame. The Nazis didn't have to go very far to pick up their know-how.
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Outward, thanks to the knowledge of physical laws, man could subdue nature, but inwardly, he remained a slave to it. For, when all is said and done, at what is aiming all this display or deployment of activity, if not to realized outward profits, to provide material pleasure or enjoyment. It is not the first time that men sell their birth right for a dish of lentils, and thus disown or repudiate or deny the best of thmeselves.
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I'm not particularly invested in, nor do I really care about, photography in a general sense. It's a medium that's relatively ubiquitous, readily accessible, and that I have some facility with, so it makes sense for me to use it.
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To say that everything in the bible is to be believed , simply because it is found in that volume, is equally absurd and pernicious... To discard a portion of scripture is not necessarily to reject the truth, but may be the highest evidence that one can give of his love of truth.
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When I was starting out, conceptual photography had become something that had to be amateur - like, that had to be black-and-white, or photocopied, or really not an object in order to be taken seriously. It had to work against technical mastery, and so on. So I think that my work is full of obstacles in the sense that it does look highly familiar and accessible. It does look like it's already "solved at first sight." It does look like it's part of a larger industry.
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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.
