Portraits Quotes - Page 21

• I have a lifetime project which consists of boxes and boxes filled with envelopes on which people have written my name. I've always thought of it as a kind of double portrait, and a portrait of our relationship, which in some cases means nothing. But it makes me feel connected.

  Micah Lexier

  Mean, Names, People

  Interview with Sheila Heti, believermag.com. October 1, 2013.

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• The humor for me is how far above your head the signature is - it's dislocated from the sign of the artist in such a distinct way that it could almost be a self-portrait of a sort.

  Laura Owens

  Artist, Self, Signatures

  Interview with Rachel Kushner, www.believermag.com. May 2003.

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• I'm related to the portrait painter George Romney.

  Wavy Gravy

  Painter, Related, Romney

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• I wasn‘t—" I began. I didn‘t—" He began. How charming," V‘lane cut us off. His voice arrived before he did. "The very portrait of human domestic bliss. She‘s on the floor, you‘re towering over her. Did he strike you, MacKayla? Say the word and I‘ll kill him.

  Karen Marie Moning

  Cutting, Voice, Bliss

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• Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?

  Anton Chekhov

  Beautiful, Believe, Lost Ones

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• Beauty can be seen in all things.

  Matt Hardy

  Photography, Photographer, All Things

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• The most difficult thing for me is a portrait. You have to try and put your camera between the skin of a person and his shirt.

  Henri Cartier-Bresson

  Photography, Skins, Trying

  "Philosophers set in stone: Steve Pyke's piercing portraits" by Sean O'Hagan, www.theguardian.com. September 8, 2011.

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

  Edward Steichen

  Inspirational, Photography, Cameras

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• And then I went round the corner and there's a Van Gogh portrait, and you just think, well, this is another level. A higher level, actually. I love the Sargent, but it's not the level of Van Gogh.

  David Hockney

  Thinking, Levels, Vans

  "'Cooler than Warhol, more enduring than Freud'". Interview with Jonathan Jones, www.theguardian.com. September 8, 2006.

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• I believe that photography can only reproduce the surface of things. The same applies to a portrait. I take photographs of people the same way I would take photographs of a plaster bust.

  Thomas Ruff

  Photography, Believe, People

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• I think if you don't love people and aren't fascinated by them, you'll never succeed as a portrait photographer, because your pictures will look cold.

  Rankin

  Thinking, People, Looks

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• In the past there were too many portraits of Chairman Mao in China. They were hung everywhere. That was not proper and it didn't really show respect for Chairman Mao.

  Deng Xiaoping

  Past, Mao, China

  Source: blog.hiddenharmonies.org

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• Before, the myth of photography doesn't lie was used in order to cover up tricks. If I [make a] portrait [of] you, accommodate you, illuminate you, put make up on you or use a filter, am I not manipulating reality? The only difference is that now I can do it from the computer in the postclick instead of the preclick. If I decide to photograph something instead of something else, I also manipulate reality. Of course a photograph can lie or commit abuse, but it always could.

  Pedro Meyer

  Photography, Lying, Reality

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• You can describe [Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self] as a manifesto of sorts. I saw it as a pivotal turn, a work that really led me down the avenues that brought me to where I am. That picture was the vehicle that helped me clarify a lot of things and I began to understand that I wanted to do.

  Kerry James Marshall

  Artist, Self, Shadow

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I want people to understand that this is a very calibrated image [Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self ], where point by point, very little is left to chance.

  Kerry James Marshall

  Artist, Self, People

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• I've heard many times that with all good artists it's ultimately a self-portrait even if it's an abstraction. I feel my work is very much who I am. I didn't try to make it that way; it just is. It reflects who I am and also my interests.

  Joyce Tenneson

  Photography, Artist, Self

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• Improvisational things about picture-making... learned from working with the small camera early on have served me well in being able to think quickly when making [portraits].

  Dawoud Bey

  Thinking, Cameras, Able

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• I think [indications of vulnerability are] why so many portraits work when they're difficult: we believe we're presenting ourselves one way, but the camera always reveals something more vulnerable, despite our best efforts.

  Katy Grannan

  Believe, Thinking, Best Effort

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• Portrait photography never had any charms for me, so I sought my subjects from the house-tops, and finally from the hill-tops and about the surrounding country; the taste strengthening as my successes became greater in proportion to the failures.

  William Henry Jackson

  Country, Photography, House

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• In making portraits, I refuse to photograph myself as do so many photographers. My style is the style of the people I photograph.

  Lotte Jacobi

  People, Style, Photographer

  Lotte Jacobi (1978). “Lotte Jacobi”

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• In my teens I fancied myself an artist; I hung out with the eccentric art teacher at my high school, painted still lifes and portraits and landscapes in watercolor and acrylics, took private lessons, won some blue ribbons for my earnest renderings. My lack of talent did little to dampen my enthusiasm. In college I thought I'd continue, but, like Salieri, I quickly realized that while I had the ability to appreciate art, I wasn't actually very good.

  Christina Baker Kline

  Teacher, Art, School

  Source: www.omnivoracious.com

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• Can you see the deaths, divorces, job losses or changes, disappointments, surprises, and successes on people's faces? Have they been happy, sad, disillusioned, or gratified? I have been trying the single, vertically shot portrait with my 8 x 10 since 1985 and never felt I succeeded in finding what I was looking for.

  Tina Barney

  Jobs, Disappointment, Divorce

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• Even a documentary portrait of a person that tries to be very accurate is shaped by the filmmaker in so many ways.

  Dana Spiotta

  Trying, Way, Documentaries

  "Dana Spiotta’s Age of Innocence". Interview with Jeff Vasishta, www.interviewmagazine.com. March 11, 2016.

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• If you look at the image [ Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self ], it treads on a kind of popular stereotypical image of the black figure, in both its flatness and slightly comic edge. To take that image as a starting point and to render it in a proto-classical medium, like egg tempera, and then use a repertoire of classical compositional devices to make the picture was a way of setting up an engagement with art history.

  Kerry James Marshall

  Art, Self, Eggs

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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• [My picture A Portrait of the Artist as a Shadow of His Former Self ] was a way of demonstrating that there was a broad range of possibilities and fairly unlimited utility for a black figure that didn't have to comprise its blackness in order to preserve a place in the field of representation.

  Kerry James Marshall

  Artist, Self, Order

  Source: www.interviewmagazine.com

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