Photograph Quotes
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I began photographing around 14; my mother gave me a camera, it's actually the one I still use for creating most of my work. My career has evolved from literally figuring out how to formally structure a photograph, to going through graduate school and trying to formally structure my thoughts. A sort of gradual learning, then unlearning.
Erik Madigan Heck
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... photography, like all camera-made images such as film and video, effaces the marks of its making (and maker) at the click of a shutter. A photograph appears to be self-generated - as though it had created itself.
Abigail Solomon-Godeau
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My goal is to photograph not a factory but the work itself from the most effective point of view.. ..in order to show the grandness of a machine, one should photograph not all of it but give a series of snapshots.
Alexander Rodchenko
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I turned off the projector and Alex mumbled something in her sleep and turned over. I said, "Everything is fine, I'm going home now," and said it just so I could say I'd said it in case she was upset later that I'd left without telling her. I thought about kissing her on the forehead but rejected the idea immediately; whatever physical intimacy had opened up between us had dissolved with the storm; even that relatively avuncular gesture would be strange for both of us now. More than that: it was as though the physical intimacy with Alex, just like the sociability with strangers or the aura around objects, wasn't just over, but retrospectively erased. Because those moments had been enabled by a future that had never arrived, they could not be remembered from this future that, at and as the present, had obtained; they'd faded from the photograph.
Ben Lerner
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A photograph is the illusion of a literal description of how the camera 'saw' a piece of time and space.
Garry Winogrand
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Of course, the camera is a far more objective and trustworthy witness than a human being. We know that a Brueghel or Goya or James Ensor can have visions or hallucinations, but it is generally admitted that a camera can photograph only what is actually there, standing in the real world before its lens.
Hannah Hoch
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My caravan was like a café and it [had] nice light because the windows were on both sides. It was a good place to photograph.
Chris Killip
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What is it that angers us?... We have been tricked. In essence, we have been lied to. The problem is not that the photograph has been manipulated, but that we have been manipulated by the photograph.
Errol Morris
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So long as people expect paintings to be simply coloured photographs they get no individuality and, in the case of portraits, no characterisation.
William Dobell
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I always loved the idea that a photograph was a memory frozen in time.
Ed Gass-Donnelly
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All profound changes in consciousness, by their very nature, bring with them characteristic amnesias. Out of such oblivions, in specific historical circumstances, spring narratives… The photograph… is only the most peremptory of a huge modern accumulation of documentary evidence… which simultaneously records a certain apparent continuity and emphasizes its loss from memory. Out of this estrangement comes a conception of personhood, identity… which, because it cannot be “remembered”, must be narrated.
Benedict Anderson
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There's no particular class of photograph that I think is any better than any other class. I'm always and forever looking for the image that has spirit! I don't give a damn how it got made.
Minor White
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What is a photograph? For me, a fragment of quick-silver, a lucid dream, a scribbled note from the subconscious to be deciphered, perhaps, over years. It is a monologue trying to become a conversation, an offering, an alibi, a salute.
Eva Rubinstein
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Grigsby's marvelous exploration-a deep, wide, and beautiful inquiry into Sojourner Truth's use of technology-features more of her photographs than have ever been collected before. Among its many insights, I especially relished the analysis of Truth's illiteracy. Enduring Truths is art history with a wide-ranging concept of history left in. A terrific book, and one we've needed for a long time.
Nell Irvin Painter
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The urge to create, the urge to photograph, comes in part from the deep desire to live with more integrity, to live more in peace with the world, and possibly to help others to do the same.
Wynn Bullock
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When you approach something to photograph it, first be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence. Then don't leave until you have captured its essence.
Minor White
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I always think photographs abominable, and I don't like to have them around, particularly not those of persons I know and love. Those photographic portraits wither much sooner than we ourselves do, whereas the painted portrait is a thing which is felt, done with love.
Vincent Van Gogh
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It doesn’t matter if you use a box camera or a Leica, the important thing is what motivates you when you are photographing. What I have tried to do is involve the people I was photographing. To have them realize without saying so, that it was up to them to give me whatever they wanted to give me . . . if they were willing to give, I was willing to photograph.
Eve Arnold
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We do not see everything in the environment in the complete, totally resolved, explicit character of the photograph. We, in fact, prioritize our seeing.
Burton Silverman
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It's always more comforting to know that in any given corner of any room or any location you're on, you can make a photograph that you'll appreciate.
Herb Ritts
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Man Ray... loved games and absolutely knew about the camera. It is interesting to note that, although I used him in only about 10 percent of the photographs and videotapes, most people think of him as omnipresent in my work. It irked me sometimes to be known only as the guy with the dog, but on the other hand it was a thrill to have a famous dog.
William Wegman
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I abstract it in my photographs: I like large planes and spaces, areas of texture and light, like deserts or oceans or monumental places.
Herb Ritts
