Ansel Adams Quotes
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Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.
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Not everybody trusts paintings but people believe photographs.
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The best picture is around the corner. Like prosperity.
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Now there is a big turnover in the galleries. The top galleries are getting better all the time. A lot of galleries just struggle along, then a new one comes along. There are certainly a great number of galleries. I think this argues well for the art but there are, of course, a lot of "phonies" in all the arts.
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The disciples are drawn to the high altars with magnetic certainty, knowing that a great Presence hovers over the ranges ... You were within the portals of the temple ... to enter the wilderness and seek, in the primal patterns of nature, a magical union with beauty.
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It is just as important to bring people the evidence of the beauty of the world of nature and of man as it is to give them a document of ugliness, squalor, and despair.
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The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it!
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All art is the expression of one and the same thing- the relation of the spirit of man to the spirit of other men and to the world.
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The whole world is, to me, very much "alive" - all the little growing things, even the rocks. I can't look at a swell bit of grass and earth, for instance, without feeling the essential life - the things going on - within them. The same goes for a mountain, or a bit of the ocean, or a magnificent piece of old wood.
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The quality of place, the reaction to immediate contact with earth and growing things that have a fugal relationship with mountains and sky, is essential to the integrity of our existence on this planet.
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Yosemite Valley, to me, is always a sunrise, a glitter of green and golden wonder in a vast edifice of stone and space. I know of no sculpture, painting or music that exceeds the compelling spiritual command of the soaring shape of granite cliff and dome, of patina of light on rock and forest, and of the thunder and whispering of the falling, flowing waters. At first the colossal aspect may dominate; then we perceive and respond to the delicate and persuasive complex of nature.
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Bad weather makes for good photography.
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There still is some opposition to it in some museums and art schools, but I think photography has really grown into a mature art form.
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A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.
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I believe the approach of the artist and the approach of the environmentalist are fairly close in that both are, to a rather impressive degree, concerned with the affirmation of life.
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I am sure the next step will be the electronic image, and I hope I shall live to see it. I trust that the creative eye will continue to function, whatever technological innovations may develop.
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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.
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The photo-journalist and the photo-poet are both important. The problem is to separate the major objectives of the various groups and not to attribute qualities and intentions where they do not belong.
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"Simply look with perceptive eyes at the world about you, and trust to your own reactions and convictions. Ask yourself: "Does this subject move me to feel, think and dream? Can I visualize a print - my own personal statement of what I feel and want to convey - from the subject before me?""
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I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term - meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching - there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.
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The artist and the photographer seek the mysteries and the adventure of experience in nature.
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The ‘machine-gun’ approach to photography – by which many negatives are made with the hope that one will be good – is fatal to serious results.
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You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.
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I have often had a retrospective vision where everything in my past life seems to fall with significance into logical sequence. Intuition, suspicion, or confidence in new ventures; there is a strange strain within me when advantage is not taken of some situation, the immediacy of recognition of the rightness or wrongness of a mood, a response, a decision - they are so often valid that I am increasingly convinced that we have yet to grasp the reality of existence.