American Landscape Quotes

• Landscape is to American painting what sex and psychoanalysis are to the American novel.

  Robert Hughes

  Sex, Landscape Painting, Novel

  64 Copy quote

• The single most important component of a camera is the twelve inches behind it!

  Ansel Adams

  Photography, Important, Cameras

  64 Copy quote

• There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs.

  Ansel Adams

  Photography, Cameras, Photographer

  Attributed in "The Everything Digital Photography Book" by E.T. Schoch, (p. 105), 2002.

  47 Copy quote

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• A good photograph is knowing where to stand.

  Ansel Adams

  Photography, Knowing, Photographer

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  39 Copy quote

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• Landscape photography is the supreme test of the photographer - and often the supreme disappointment.

  Ansel Adams

  Photography, Disappointment, Landscape

  Ansel Adams (1965). “Basic Photo: Natural-light photography”

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• There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.

  Ansel Adams

  Inspirational, Photography, Creativity

  Interview with David Sheff, davidsheff.com. March 1983.

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• 

  It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.

  Ansel Adams

  Nature, Fighting, Government

  "Playboy Interview: Ansel Adams". Interview with David Sheff, Playboy (p. 226), May 1, 1983.

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• You don't take a photograph, you make it.

  Ansel Adams

  Inspirational, Photography, Art

  33 Copy quote

• The American Indian is of the soil, whether it be the region of forests, plains, pueblos, or mesas. He fits into the landscape, for the hand that fashioned the continent also fashioned the man for his surroundings. He once grew as naturally as the wild sunflowers, he belongs just as the buffalo belonged.

  Luther Standing Bear

  Nature, Native American, Men

  Luther Standing Bear (2006). “Land of the Spotted Eagle”, p.247, U of Nebraska Press

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• Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.

  Ansel Adams

  Photography, Years, Twelve

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Any landscape is a condition of the spirit.

  Henri Frederic Amiel

  Landscape, Spirit, Conditions

  29 Copy quote

• Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.

  Ansel Adams

  Photography, Art, Communication

  Ansel Adams (1962). “Basic Photo: Artificial-light photography”

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• My pictures must first be beautiful, but that beauty is not enough. I strive to convey an underlying edge of anxiety, of isolation, of fear.

  Gregory Crewdson

  Beauty, Beautiful, Photography

  97 Copy quote

• The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background.

  Edith Wharton

  Mind, Literature, Landscape

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• ...but I preferred reading the American landscape as we went along. Every bump, rise, and stretch in it mystified my longing.

  Jack Kerouac

  Reading, Bumps, Landscape

  Jack Kerouac (2007). “Road Novels 1957-1960”

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• Edgar Wayburn has worked to preserve the most breath-taking examples of the American landscape. In fact, over the course of more than a half-century, both as President of the Sierra Club and as a private citizen, he has saved more of our wilderness than any person alive.

  William J. Clinton

  President, Example, Citizens

  4 Copy quote

• One classic American landscape haunts all of American literature. It is a picture of Eden, perceived at the instant of history when corruption has just begun to set it. The serpent has shown his scaly head in the undergrowth. The apple gleams on the tree. The old drama of the Fall is ready to start all over again.

  Jonathan Raban

  Drama, Fall, Eden

  Jonathan Raban (1992). “For Love and Money: A Writing Life”, Perennial

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• I have been using the art of photography to research the ways in which the pictorial strategies of the Nineteenth Century color the way in which the American landscape is apprehended by today's viewers.

  John Pfahl

  Photography, Art, Color

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• The Place of Religion in Chicago is a clearly written account of a little-studied aspect of American landscape. Based on unique field surveys and supported by photographs, tables, and beautifully crafted maps, the book will form a lasting contribution to our understanding of an overlooked element of the American urban scene: the religious landscape of a major metropolis.

  Peter Haggett

  Religious, Book, Unique

  4 Copy quote

• At one with the power of the American landscape, and renowned for the patient skill and timeless beauty of his work, photographer Ansel Adams has been visionary in his efforts to preserve this country's wild and scenic areas, both in film and on Earth. Drawn to the beauty of nature's monuments, he is regarded by environmentalists as a monument himself, and by photographers as a national institution. It is through his foresight and fortitude that so much of America has been saved for future Americans.

  Ansel Adams

  Country, Skills, America

  7 Copy quote

• I’m interested in using the iconography of nature and the American landscape as surrogates or metaphors for psychological anxiety, fear or desire

  Gregory Crewdson

  Photography, Art, Nature

  49 Copy quote

• The first supermarket supposedly appeared on the American landscape in 1946. That is not very long ago. Until then, where was all the food? Dear folks, the food was in homes, gardens, local fields, and forests. It was near kitchens, near tables, near bedsides. It was in the pantry, the cellar, the backyard.

  Joel Salatin

  Home, Garden, Long Ago

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