Photography Quotes - Page 15

• Taking photographs can assuage the itch for possession sparked by the beauty of a place; our anxiety over losing a precious scene can decline with every click of the shutter.

  Alain de Botton

  Anxiety, Losing, Scene

  Alain de Botton (2003). “The Art of Travel”, p.114, Penguin UK

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• Rather than employing it as a supplement to active, conscious seeing, they used the medium as a substitute, paying less attention to the world than they had done previously, taking it on faith that photography automatically assured them possession of it.

  Alain de Botton

  Attention, Done, World

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• Not only does a lens distort forms, but the ordinary plate makes an unholy mess of colour in its tone relations. Yellow becomes black, and blue white. Black sunflowers against a white sky - what a travesty!

  Walter J. Phillips

  Blue, Sky, Yellow

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• If you're going to paint from photos, make sure you've painted for at least ten years.

  John F. Carlson

  Years, Paint, Ten

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• As every artist who has used the method knows - photography's a loyal slave and a tyrannical master.

  Robert Genn

  Artist, Loyal, Slave

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• It is definitely mostly due to the invention of the camera that all this design and emphasized paint quality have come into painting.

  E. J. Hughes

  Design, Quality, Cameras

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• Photography is much more about elimination than inclusion. The images we make with a lens typically eliminate ninety percent of our field of view and everything that is out of our field of view. The shutter slices time, eliminating all moments before and after it opens and closes. Three dimensions are reduced to two. And in some cases color is removed. How can we call these kinds of artifacts unaltered?

  John Paul Caponigro

  Views, Color, Two

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• Painting requires skill. Photography is created by the camera, and one cannot fully control what the camera sees. So people take many photographs because several must always be discarded.

  Igor Babailov

  Skills, People, Cameras

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• I don't use photographs because photographs don't give me the kind of information I need.

  Alex Colville

  Giving, Needs, Use

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• If you paint from 35mm Kodachrome, you end up with a 4x5 foot Kodachrome!

  Sergei Bongart

  Feet, Paint, Ends

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• There are two parts to the process: taking the picture and finding ways of using it.

  Martin Parr

  Two, Way, Process

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• Photography's central role is to be the absolute medium of the day. It is fantastic that there is no longer any technical intimidation.

  Martin Parr

  Roles, Intimidation, Fantastic

  "An Interview with Martin Parr – “Boundaries Merely Exist in People's Minds” (2007)". Interview with Maarten Dings and Joachim Naudts, www.americansuburbx.com. May 17, 2010.

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• The effort of painting from life has cost my models a great deal of physical discomfort, and cost me a great deal of money in model fees... I have wanted to make the camera obsolete... because, in my reading about early 20th century art, I found that the most frequently used argument made in favor of abstraction was that the camera made realist painting obsolete.

  Philip Pearlstein

  Art, Reading, Effort

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• Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.

  Berenice Abbott

  Song, Mean, Giving

  Berenice Abbott, Julia Van Haaften (1989). “Berenice Abbott, photographer: a modern vision : a selection of photographs and essays”

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• In my mind's eye, I visualize how a particular... sight and feeling will appear on a print. If it excites me, there is a good chance it will make a good photograph. It is an intuitive sense, an ability that comes from a lot of practice.

  Ansel Adams

  Eye, Practice, Sight

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• 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

  God, Memories, Order

  John Berger (2015). “About Looking”, p.44, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Within every man and woman a secret is hidden, and as a photographer it is my task to reveal it if I can.

  Yousuf Karsh

  Men, Secret, Tasks

  Yousuf Karsh, David Travis (2009). “Regarding Heroes”, David R. Godine Publisher

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• I find it some of the hardest photography and the most challenging photography I've ever done. It's a real challenge to work with the natural features and the natural light.

  Galen Rowell

  Real, Light, Challenges

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• The arts equally have distinct departments, and unless photography has its own possibilities of expression, separate from those of the other arts, it is merely a process, not an art.

  Alfred Stieglitz

  Art, Expression, Possibility

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• Photography suits the temper of this age - of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately.

  Edward Weston

  Ideas, Perfect, Mind

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• The best thing about a picture is that it never changes, even when the people in it do.

  Andy Warhol

  Inspirational, I Hate You, People

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• 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

  Cameras, Use, Unattainable

  Anne Whiston Spirn, Dorothea Lange (2009). “Daring to Look: Dorothea Lange's Photographs and Reports from the Field”, University Of Chicago Press

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• If I like many photographers, and I do, I account for this by noting a quality they share - animation. They may or may not make a living by photography, but they are alive by it.

  Robert Adams

  Quality, Alive, May

  Robert Adams (1994). “Why People Photograph: Selected Essays and Reviews”

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• The more you photograph, the more you realize what can and what can't be photographed. You just have to keep doing it.

  Eliot Porter

  Realizing, Photograph

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• Photography has no rules, it is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved.

  Bill Brandt

  Sports, Matter, Results

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