Photograph Quotes
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My point is that meaning is always personal, changeable and subjective. There is no 'correct' interpretation of a photograph.
Bill Jay
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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 true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words.
Ansel Adams
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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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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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I guess my choice of medium depends on how I want to interpret the idea. Sometimes the interpretation works best in a photograph, and then sometimes it works best in a drawing. But most often times, with the work, everything starts with the diorama with the photograph. Then I'm just filtering out ideas and images from the photograph and reinterpreting them in other mediums.
Wardell Milan
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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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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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When we were kids, growing up in the sixties, the only images we had of ourselves were either still photographs or 8mm movies.... Now we have video, digital cameras, MP3s, and a million other ways to document ourselves. But the still photograph continues to hold a sense of mystery and awe to me.
Catherine Opie
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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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There is nothing, under present conditions, that can be more easily and exactly reproduced than a technically good black-and-white photograph, and it is utter rot to burden those interested in them with irrelevant biographical trivia and pet longwinded theory.
Clarence John Laughlin
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A photograph is a photograph. When I am making a picture I am just interested in making a very interesting photograph. I don't care where it's going to go.
Abelardo Morell
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I often had to pass over photographs because in a mass of animals invariably one would be wandering in the wrong direction, thereby disrupting the pattern I was trying to achieve. Today the ability to digitally alter this disruption is at hand.
Art Wolfe
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I think with being blind the one thing you would have going is that you could still feel things, see your way around so to speak. And if you had had the experience of seeing at one time in your life, then you would know what it was like and be able to function. I've said this before, I think I could really photograph blind if I had to.
William Eggleston
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Things changed a little when I started taking photographs for magazines. I was afraid in the beginning. I thought, "Oh I can't do it, because I have never taken a photographs commercially for a magazine." But I wanted to learn so I started. But when I took models from agencies, I took beginners. Sometimes they were really good, but you have to work with them. You have to be good with women and the boys.
Walter Pfeiffer
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A photograph is a biography of a moment.
Art Shay
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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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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
