PHOTOGRAPHY QUOTES III
quotations about photography
The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
DOROTHEA LANGE
Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life
Photography, if practiced with high seriousness, is a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. The contest can be held anywhere.
JOHN SZARKOWSKI
Looking at photographs: 100 pictures from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art
One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind. To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.
DOROTHEA LANGE
Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life
Life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference and it is important to see what is invisible to others.
ROBERT FRANK
attributed, Photographic Possibilities
The photograph has reversed the purpose of travel, which until now had been to encounter the strange and unfamiliar.... The world itself becomes a sort of museum of objects that have been encountered before in some other medium.
MARSHALL MCLUHAN
Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man
The camera is a perfect companion. It makes no demands, imposes no obligations. It becomes your notebook and your reference library, your microscope and your telescope. It sees what you are too lazy or too careless to notice, and it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.
AARON SISKIND
attributed, The Amateur Photographer's Handbook
The act of photography is like going on a hunt in which photographer and camera merge into one indivisible function. This is a hunt for new states of things, situations never seen before, for the improbable, for information.
VILEM FLUSSER
Towards a Philosophy of Photography
Photography knows how to authenticate its misrepresentations.
MASON COOLEY
City Aphorisms
After all, the decisive quality in a photographer is the faculty of seeing certain things and being tempted by them.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
"George Bernard Shaw on Coburn's Photography", British Journal of Photography, 1906
The definition of a picture and the definition of photography is evolving in this truly digital space. Pictures can do things that pictures were never supposed to do.
RUSSELL ARMAND
"How the GIF Is Taking Over the World", Time, March 30, 2016
In order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes.
ROLAND BARTHES
Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography
My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, or the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.
EDWARD WESTON
attributed, Pictures on a Page: Photojournalism and Picture Editing
To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have; it turns people into objects that can be symbolically possessed.
SUSAN SONTAG
On Photography
Photography is an art of observation. It has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.
ELLIOTT ERWITT
attributed, "100 inspirational photography quotes", Shootzilla
Photography is a fickle art. You might start with the plan to shoot perfume bottles and end up doing corporate portraits. You might think at some point in your career that uber retouched imagery is your signature only to realize that the natural look that you though so boring is becoming a key ingredient in your style. Yes there are individuals who have a distinct style even when they are toddlers but for the rest of us -- human beings -- our art is forged by the gruesome practice of trail and fail.
ANNA DABROWSKA
"Why Professional Gear Is Not The Most Important Element in Photography", Fstoppers, April 20, 2016
It is in these moments of stillness where I can really appreciate the little hidden surprises at every turn, the small details that often go unnoticed as we hurtle through our days. When you stop, take a deep breath, and find your sense of wonder, you surprise yourself with the beauty that lies in your frame.
GUY SEBASTIAN
"Guy Sebastian shares his photography tips", Sunshine Coast Daily, April 26, 2016
The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.
JOHN BERGER
About Looking
It is a cruel, ironical art, photography. The dragging of captured moments into the future; moments that should have been allowed to be evaporate into the past; should exist only in memories, glimpsed through the fog of events that came after. Photographs force us to see people before their future weighed them down.
KATE MORTON
The House at Riverton
A photograph is a moral decision taken in one eighth of a second.
SALMAN RUSHDIE
The Ground Beneath Her Feet
I love things like Instagram and Pinterest. I get so many ideas just by getting a daily digest of images from great photographers who I follow on social media. What that also does is it tells me which pictures stand out to me, then I can analyse them and try and work out what it is about that particular image that had me mesmerised for longer than a glance.
GUY SEBASTIAN
"Guy Sebastian shares his photography tips", Sunshine Coast Daily, April 26, 2016