Edward Steichen Quotes

• A portrait is not made in the camera but on either side of it.

  Edward Steichen

  Inspirational, Photography, Cameras

  35 Copy quote

• When I first became interested in photography, I thought it was the whole cheese. My idea was to have it recognized as one of the fine arts. Today I don't give a hoot in hell about that. The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each man to himself.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Art, Men

  58 Copy quote

• Once you really commence to see things, then you really commence to feel things.

  Edward Steichen

  Vision, Awe, Feels

  20 Copy quote

• Photography is a medium of formidable contradictions. It is both ridiculously easy and almost impossibly difficult. It is easy because its technical rudiments can readily be mastered by anyonwith a few simple instructions. It is difficult because, while while the artist working in any other medium begins with a blank surface and gradually brings his conception into being, the photographer is the only imagemaker who begins with the picture completed. His emotions, his knowledge, and his native talent are brought into focus and fixed beyond recall the moment the shutter of his camera has closed.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Artist, Simple

  28 Copy quote

• Every other artist begins with a blank canvas, a piece of paper the photographer begins with the finished product.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Art, Pieces

  29 Copy quote

• Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face, the beauty of the earth and skies that man has inherited, and the wealth and confusion man has created. It is a major force in explaining man to man.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Men, Sky

  "To Catch the Instant", Time Magazine, April 7, 1961.

  53 Copy quote

• The mission of photography is to explain man to man and each to himself. And that is the most complicated thing on earth.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Men, Earth

  17 Copy quote

• The boy and girl going hand in hand through a meadow; the mother washing her baby; the sweet simple things in life. We have almost lost track of them. On the one side, we over-intellectualize everything; on the other hand, we are over-mechanized. We can understand the danger of the atomic bomb, but the danger of our misunderstanding the meaning of life is much more serious.

  Edward Steichen

  Girl, Mother, Baby

  17 Copy quote

• When that shutter clicks, anything else that can be done afterward is not worth consideration.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Art, Done

  15 Copy quote

• No photographer is as good as the simplest camera.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Cameras, Photographer

  12 Copy quote

• I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself.

  Edward Steichen

  Nature, Real, Light

  Edward Steichen, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1963). “A Life in Photography”, Random House Value Pub

  16 Copy quote

• Photography is a major force in explaining man to man.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Men, Records

  42 Copy quote

• Every ten years a man should give himself a good kick in the pants.

  Edward Steichen

  Birthday, Men, Years

  14 Copy quote

• A photograph is worth a thousand words, provided it is accompanied by only ten words.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Photographer, Thousand

  11 Copy quote

• Women-the greatest natural resource in the world today.

  Edward Steichen

  World, Today, Natural

  8 Copy quote

• I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Real, Light

  Edward Steichen, Museum of Modern Art (New York, N.Y.) (1963). “A Life in Photography”, Random House Value Pub

  11 Copy quote

• Photography records the gamut of feelings written on the human face.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Feelings, Faces

  "To Catch the Instant", Time Magazine, April 7, 1961.

  17 Copy quote

• Every photograph is a fake from start to finish.

  Edward Steichen

  Fake, Photograph

  Edward Steichen, Royal Photographic Society of Great Britain, Istituto di cultura Santa Maria della Grazie (Mestre, Italy) (1997). “Edward Steichen: the Royal Photographic Society Collection”, Distributed Art Pub Inc

  4 Copy quote

• It is an error common to many artists, who strive merely to avoid mistakes, when all our efforts should be to create positive and important work. Better positive and important with mistakes and failures than perfect mediocrity.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Mistake, Artist

  10 Copy quote

• Art for art's sake is dead, if it ever lived.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Art, Sake

  4 Copy quote

• The use of the term art medium is, to say the least, misleading, for it is the artist that creates a work of art not the medium. It is the artist in photography that gives form to content by a distillation of ideas, thought, experience, insight and understanding.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Art, Ideas

  7 Copy quote

• To make good photographs, to express something, to contribute something to the world he lives in, and to contribute something to the art of photography besides imitations of the best photographers on the market today, that is basic training, the understanding of self.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Art, Self

  8 Copy quote

• You know... that a blank wall is an apalling thing to look at...
  The wall of a museum - a canvas - a piece of film - or a guy sitting in front of a typewriter. Then, you start out to do something - that vague thing called creation. The beginning strikes awe within you.

  Edward Steichen

  Wall, Museums, Typewriters

  4 Copy quote

• There is only one optimist. He has been here since man has been on this earth, and that is man himself. If we hadn't had such a magnificent optimism to carry us through all these things, we wouldn't be here. We have survived it on our optimism.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Men, Optimism

  7 Copy quote

• Some day there may be... machinery that needs but to be wound up and sent roaming o'er hill and dale, through fields and meadows, by babbling brooks and shady woods - in short, a machine that will discriminately select its subject and, by means of a skillful arrangement of springs and screws, compose its motif, expose the plate, develop, print, and even mount and frame the result of its excursion, so that there will be nothing for us to do but to send it to the Royal Photographic Society's exhibition and gratefully to receive the 'Royal Medal'.

  Edward Steichen

  Photography, Spring, Mean

  10 Copy quote

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