Photography Quotes
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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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I love photography. My boyfriend's got a great camera, which I bought for his birthday.
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To communicate requires that those who view the work also understand. Fortunately, people respond to visual stimulus on more than one level. Abstraction, for instance, has always played a big role in artistic expression, and it is becoming more accepted in photographs. There’s nothing new about abstraction in painting, but for some reason people respect painting more than photography. This might be because photographs are so widely used by the media in this culture that they are regarded as mere ephemera… you look at a photograph once and then turn the page
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Photography makes one conscious of beauty everywhere, even in the simplest things, even in what is often considered commonplace or ugly. Yet nothing is really 'ordinary', for every fragment of the world is crowned with wonder and mystery, and a great and surprising beauty.
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Photography is in some ways false just because it is so exact.
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Art can no longer be merely a mirror, it must act as the organizer of the people's consciousness... No form of representation is so readily comprehensible to the masses as photography.
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In photography one should surely proceed from essence of the object and attempt to represent it with photographic terms alone.
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Over the years, photography has been to me what a journal is to a writer - a record of things seen and experienced, moments in the flow of time, documents of significance to me, experiments in seeing.
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To me photography must suggest, not insist or explain.
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Photography is a strong tool, a propaganda device, and a weapon for the defense of the environment...and therefore for the fostering of a healthy human race and even very likely for its survival.
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I love photography... I'd like to write a show about photography.
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When I was just starting out, I met Cartier-Bresson. He wasn't young in age but, in his mind, he was the youngest person I'd ever met. He told me it was necessary to trust my instincts, be inside my work, and set aside my ego. In the end, my photography turned out very different to his, but I believe we were coming from the same place.
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Photography, for me, is a lot like web surfing in real life.
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Only recently serious research into the relationship between photography and art has taken place. Why has it been so long in coming ? “In some respects historical research is analogous with that of science. The bringing to light of factual material and the development of ideas is to a large extent cumulative.[…] But when artists themselves were, from about 1910, beginning to tear down the bastions protecting Art in its ivory tower, questioning the idea of Art with a capital ‘A’, photography was inevitably to assume a new stature both in the eyes of artists and the public, too."
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I like small things, I like small moments that are almost elliptical, that are not necessarily linear; they're natural things that happen in the world, but if you look at them from a slight angle there's more than meets the eye.
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I've always thought photography was an art form, but it had very low appreciation in the beginning, except for some Europeans, and of course Stieglitz. Stieglitz always considered photography to be an art form and is the "father" of the creative concepts of the twentieth century.
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Photography works hand in glove with image and memory and therefore possesses their notable epidemic power.
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Life wanted faces that would express what we wanted to tell. Not just the unusual or striking face, but the face that would speak out the message from the printed page. I am always looking for some typical person or face that will tie the picture essay together in a human way.
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Photography is linked with death in many different ways. The most immediate and explicit is the social practice of keeping photographs in memory of loved beings who are no longer alive. But there is another real death which each of us undergoes every day, as each day we draw nearer to our own death. Even when the person photographed is still living, that moment when she or he was has forever vanished.
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For me it is clear that photography prizes should be for those being photographed and not for the photographers.
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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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Black-and-white photography, which I was doing in the very early days, was essentially called art photography and usually consisted of landscapes by people like Ansel Adams and Edward Weston. But photographs by people like Adams didn't interest me.
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I never tried to revolutionise photography; I just do what I do and keep my fingers crossed that people will like it.
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The camera is a remarkable instrument. Saturate yourself with your subject, and the camera will all but take you by the hand and point the way.
