Quotes about photographer (383 quotes, page 4)

“to show that [the success of my portray-] photographs was not due to subject matter – not to special trees or faces, or interiors, to special privileges – clouds were there for everyone... I wanted to photograph clouds to find out what I had learned in forty years about photography. Through clouds to put down my philosophy of life... My aim is increasingly to make my photographs look so much like photographs that unless one has eyes and sees, they won't be seen – and still everyone will never forget them having once looked at them.”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) American photographer

'How I came to Photograph Clouds', Alfred Stieglitz, in 'Amateur Photographer and Photography', (19 September 1923): 255.
about his new subject: 'clouds' in his long series 'Equivalents' he started in 1922

Life , Tree , Learning , Success

“A contact sheet is so interesting, because you see how a photographer thinks. He comes closer and closer to a subject, corrects it, looks at it again, and then with tiny movements turns around until it is in exactly the right and exact relation to him. Contact sheets may be compared to the way you drive a nail into a plank. First you give several light taps to build up a rhythm and align the nail with the wood. Then, much more quickly, and with as few strokes as possible, you hit the nail forcefully on the head and drive it in.”

Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908–2004) French photographer

Source: Henri Cartier-Bresson: Interviews and Conversations, 1951-1998, Conversation. Interview with Byron Dobell (1957), p. 37

Way , Thinking , Light

“The first thing I want to do is apologize: to Leeann, to everyone else who was part of that tour, to everyone who has worked for me, to everyone I represent, and to everyone who counts on me to be an ally and supporter and champion of women. There's more I want to say, but the first and most important thing—and if it's the only thing you care to hear, that's fine—is: I'm sorry.
I respect women. I don't respect men who don't. And the fact that my own actions have given people a good reason to doubt that makes me feel ashamed.
But I want to say something else, too. Over the last few months, all of us—including and especially men who respect women—have been forced to take a good, hard look at our own actions and think (perhaps, shamefully, for the first time) about how those actions have affected women.
For instance, that picture [when Franken appears to grope the breasts of a sleeping Leeann Tweeden, while simultaneously smiling towards the photographer] I don't know what was in my head when I took that picture, and it doesn't matter. There's no excuse. I look at it now and I feel disgusted with myself. It isn't funny. It's completely inappropriate. It's obvious how Leeann would feel violated by that picture. And, what's more, I can see how millions of other women would feel violated by it—women who have had similar experiences in their own lives, women who fear having those experiences, women who look up to me, women who have counted on me.”

Al Franken (1951) American comedian and politician

November 2017 statement https://www.wdio.com/news/al-franken-statement-leeann-tweeden/4672510/ in response to allegations of sexual harassment and groping made by Leeann Tweeden against Franken.

Women , Men , People , Fear

“Somewhere in my closet
There's a cardboard box just sittin' on a shelf.
It's full of faded memories
And it's been there ever since the night you left.Oh, just forgotten photographs
To remind me of the past.
Oh, but I can still see everything just fine.
Who needs pictures with a memory like mine?
Yeah, who needs pictures with a memory like mine?”

Brad Paisley (1972) American country music singer

Who Needs Pictures, written by Brad Paisley, Chris DuBois and Frank Rogers.
Song lyrics, Who Needs Pictures (1999)

Memory , Past , Night , Box

“Why We See Things and Not the Holes Between Them. We can now attempt an answer to the question why we do so. Two of the factors of organization which we have so far discussed seem to me to be the most important causes of this effect. In the first place, the segregation and unification which occurs will separate areas of different degrees of internal articulation, and according to our law, the more highly articulated ones will become figures, the rest fusing together to form the ground. Look at any landscape photograph. You see the shape of the things, the mountains, and trees and buildings, but not of the sky.”

Kurt Koffka (1886–1941) German psychologist

Source: Principles of Gestalt Psychology, 1935, p. 208-9

Law , Mountain , Question , Tree

“The motivation for an "information highway" was expressed in 1937, just prior to the advent of computer technology, when Wells was promoting the concept of a "World Brain" based on a "permanent world encyclopaedia" as a social good through giving universal access to all of human knowledge. He remarks: "our contemporary encyclopaedias are still in the coach-and-horses phase of development, rather than in the phase of the automobile and the aeroplane. Encyclopaedic enterprise has not kept pace with material progress. These observers realize that the modern facilities of transport, radio, photographic reproduction and so forth are rendering practicable a much more fully succinct and accessible assembly of facts and ideas than was ever possible before."”

Brian R. Gaines (1938) British computer scientist

(Wells, 1938) </blockquote>
First paragraph
Convergence to the Information Highway (1996)

World , Motivation , Idea , Knowledge

“Between two fantasy alternatives, that Holbein the Younger had lived long enough to have painted Shakespeare or that a prototype of the camera had been invented early enough to have photographed him, most Bardolators would choose the photograph. This is not just because it would presumably show what Shakespeare really looked like, for even if the photograph were faded, barely legible, a brownish shadow, we would probably still prefer it to another glorious Holbein. Having a photograph of Shakespeare would be like having a nail from the True Cross.”

Susan Sontag book On Photography

"The Image-World", p. 154
On Photography (1977)

Painting

“But my motivation was more a matter of wanting to create order – to keep track of things. All those boxes full of photographs and sketches weigh you down, because they have something unfinished, incomplete, about them. So it's better to present the usable material in an orderly fashion and throw the other stuff away. That's how the Atlas came to be, and I exhibited it a few times.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote of an interview with Stefan Koldehoff, 1999; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: 'on Atlas' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/atlas-4
1990's

Motivation , Fashion , Time , Box

“I like everything that has no style: dictionaries, photographs, nature, myself and my paintings. (Because style is violence, and I am not violent).”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 51, note 63

Nature , Painting

“ Every individual word in a passage or poetry can no more be said to denote some specific referent than does every brush mark, every line in a painting have its counterpart in reality. The writer or speaker does not communicate his thoughts to us; he communicates a representation for carrying out, this function under the severe discipline of using the only materials he has, sound and gesture. Speech is like painting, a representation made out of given materials -- sound or paint. The function of speech is to stimulate and set up thoughts in us having correspondence with the speaker's desires; he has then communicated with us. But he has not transmitted a copy of his thoughts, a photograph, but only a stream of speech -- a substitute made from the unpromising material of sound. The artist, the sculptor, the caricaturist, the composer are akin in this [fact that they have not transmitted a copy of their thoughts], that they express (make representations of) their thoughts using chosen, limited materials. They make the "best" representations, within these self-imposed constraints. A child who builds models of a house, or a train, using only a few colored bricks, is essentially engaged in the same creative task.* Metaphors can play a most forceful role, by importing ideas through a vehicle language, setting up what are purely linguistic associations (we speak of "heavy burden of taxation," "being in a rut"). The imported concepts are, to some extent, artificial in their contexts, and they are by no means universal among different cultures. For instance, the concepts of cleanliness and washing are used within Christendom to imply "freedom from sin." We Westerners speak of the mind's eye, but this idea is unknown amongst the Chinese. that is, we are looking at it with the eyes of our English-speaking culture. A grammar book may help us to decipher the text more thoroughly, and help us comprehend something of the language structure, but we may never fully understand if we are not bred in the culture and society that has modeled and shaped the language. (p. 74)”

Colin Cherry (1914–1979) British scientist

See Gombrich in reference 348
On Human Communication (1957), Language: Science and Aesthetics

Books , Color , Communication , Idea

“I wanted to photograph this subject because the signs’ shrieking blatancy literally cried out for a visual record. To my mind the faded, yellowing paper and the red paint were not particularly paint, able. In black and white the signs shouted, clamored for attention, in visual anarchy. At the same time, the shrewd business sense which plastered them solid over the entire window area produced, as it were by chance, an esthetic by-product: the whole has homogeneity and variety of texture, simultaneously, which give the picture interest.”

Berenice Abbott (1898–1991) American photographer

New Guide to Better Photography, 1953.

Business , Sense , Chance , Time

“My first photo Picture? I was doing large pictures in gloss enamel... One day a photograph of Brigit Bardot fell into my hands, and I painted it into one of these pictures in shades of grey. I had had enough of bloody painting, and painting from a photograph seemed to me the most moronic.... thing that everyone could do.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Source: after 2000, Doubt and belief in painting' (2003), p. 43, note 36 : quote on his start with photography

Photo , Painting

“I know exactly what I have photographed [in his series 'Equivalents', 1925 - 1934]. I know I have done something that has never been done... I also know that there is more of the really abstract in some 'representation' than in most of the dead representations of the so-called abstract so fashionable now.”

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) American photographer

In a letter about his 'Equivalents' to w:Hart Crane; as quoted in Photography as High Art, Hilton Kramer, (1982-12-19)., in 'New York Times'. p. 1. Retrieved 2008-12-26; as quoted on Wikipedia.

Fashion , Dead

“Found this picture of Angie laughing in a restaurant with some other people, everybody pretty but beyond that it was like they had this glow, not really in the photograph but it was there anyway, something you feel. Look, she said to Lanette, showing her the picture, they got this glow.
It’s called money, Lanette said.”

William Gibson book Mona Lisa Overdrive

Source: Mona Lisa Overdrive (1988), Ch. 19

Money , People , Feeling

“[O]n surviving film footage of Eisner’s funeral we see Hitler with a few men from his unit walking behind Eisner’s coffin in the funeral procession of the Bavarian leader. We clearly see Hitler wearing two armbands: one black band to mourn the death of Eisner and the other a red armband in the colour of the Socialists revolution. Similarly, Hitler appears on one of Heinrich Hoffman’s photographs of the funeral process for Eisner.”

Thomas Weber (historian) (1974) German historian

Source: Hitler’s First War: Adolf Hitler, the Men of the List Regiment, and the First World War (2011), p. 251

Death , Men , Appearance

“Being a physicist, my father was a great believer in progress, but he also loved nature. He was a photographer, and outside of taking the occasional family photographs, all he did was photograph nature. He loved birds. That meant a lot to me growing up. Healthy progress also means we have to be concerned for the environment. That may have something to do with what I believe about farming.”

Dave Matthews (1967) American singer-songwriter, musician and actor

"The Craftsman: Dave Matthews," interview by Dave Hoekstra for Farm Aid

Love , Family , Nature , Bird

“…photographers shouldn’t confuse their response to the politics of the country with their role as photographers.”

David Goldblatt (1930–2018) South African photographer

In an interview with Okwui Enwezor, as quoted in "The Camera Is Not a Machine Gun" http://designobserver.com/article.php?id=10557, Fred Ritchin, 1998

Country

“Thank you to the stellar collection of photographers, designers, editors, musicians, costumers, painters, researchers, electricians and craftspeople who without whom I'd just be a bitter man with a lot of opinions”

David Fincher (1962) American film director

2011 Golden Globe Award Ceremony (2011)

“My wife and child and I were on a camping trip and we stopped in Virginia City. In the Opera House, I saw a photograph of Maude Adams, the famous American actress. It was such a great photograph that creatively I fell in love with her. What if some guy did the same thing and could go back in time?”

Richard Matheson (1926–2013) American fiction writer

On his initial inspiration for the novel Bid Time Return (1975), as quoted in Behind the Scenes of Somewhere in Time (1980) http://erasofelegance.com/OldFiles/Movies/sitmovie.html"

Love , Guy , Time , Housing

“Mark Tobey fills his canvases with elliptical, calligraphic lines, beautiful whirls that seem at first glance to be completely abstract and to come from nowhere at all except his own subjective musing. But I shall never forget how struck I was, on visiting Tobey's studio one day, to see strewn around books on astronomy and photographs of the Milky Way. I knew then that Tobey experiences the movement of the stars and solar constellations as the external pole of his encounter.”

Rollo May (1909–1994) US psychiatrist

Source: The Courage to Create (1975), Ch. 4 : Creativity and the Encounter, p. 80

Books , Beauty , Way , Star

“And they took twenty seven eight-by-ten color glossy photographs with circles and arrows and a paragraph on the back of each one explaining what each one was to be used as evidence against us. Took pictures of the approach, the getaway, the northwest corner the southwest corner and that's not to mention the aerial photography.”

Arlo Guthrie (1947) American folk singer

Alice's Restaurant Massacree

Color

“Manhattan is not altogether felicitous for fiction. It is not a city of memory, not a family city, not the capital of America so much as the iconic capital of this century. It is grand and grandiose with its two rivers acting as a border to contain the restless. Its skyscrapers and bleak, rotting tenements are a gift for photographic consumption, but for the fictional imagination the city's inchoate density is a special challenge.”

Elizabeth Hardwick (1916–2007) Novelist, short story writer, literary critic

"Locations: An Introduction" (p. xvi)
American Fictions (1999)

Family , Imagination , Memory

“Smiles come naturally to me, but I started thinking of them as an art form at my command. I studied all the time. I looked at magazines, I'd practice in front of the mirror and I'd ask photographers about the best angles. I can now pull out a smile at will.”

Tyra Banks (1973) American model, author and television personality

Lynn Hirschberg (June 1, 2008) "Banksable" http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/01/magazine/01tyra-t.html?ei=5124&en=6a5e98a9634a54f6&ex=1369972800&partner=permalink&exprod=permalink&pagewanted=all, The New York Times, The New York Times Company.

Smile , Art , Nature , Thinking

“I'm actually very sensitive about those things, and it's personally painful…You know, whenever they made fun of my makeup, it was because the newspapers colorized my photograph.”

Katherine Harris (1957) U.S. politician

On Sean Hannity's talk radio program, August 1, 2005, responding to Hannity asking Harris whether the jokes bothered her.

Pain , Color , Personality

“…he (a photographer) forgets that unless he has learnt when the tones of a picture are right or not, he will not know whether his work is good or bad, nor know what to try and overcome in future.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, The photographic print, p. 36

Future , Forgetting

“The structure of a system is the arrangement of its subsystems and components in three-dimensional space at a given moment of time. This always changes over time. It may remain relatively fixed for a long period or it may change from moment to moment, depending upon the characteristics of the process in the system. This process halted at any given moment, as when motion is frozen by a high-speed photograph, reveals the three-dimensional spatial arrangement of the system's components as of that instant.”

James Grier Miller (1916–2002) biologist

Source: Living systems, 1978, p. 22; As cited in: Egolfs Voldemars Bakuzis (1974) Foundations of Forest Ecosystems: Concepts of systems in general. p. 490

Change , Time , Dependency , Speed

“All the walls of a city, which, by family tradition, seemed so mine, witnessed the martyrdom and the inhumane repression inflicted on our people. Cultural memories stressed its urgency. All the archaeological information I have absorbed, the advice of Leonardo da Vinci, the destruction brought about by Dada, the photographs of Brassaï, all contributed, unsurprisingly, to the fact that my first works of 1945 had something to do with street graffiti and a universe of repressed protest, clandestine yet full of life, as one could find on the walls of my country.”

Antoni Tàpies (1923–2012) Catalan painter, sculptor and art theorist

Tàpies is referring to the Franco-repression in Spain.
1945 - 1970, A Report on the Wall' 1970

Life , People , Family , Universe

“The best articles about Vincent Gallo were written by Vincent Gallo, the best acting performance of Vincent Gallo was directed and edited by Vincent Gallo from a screenplay written by Vincent Gallo, even the best photographs of Vincent Gallo were taken by Vincent Gallo.”

Vincent Gallo (1961) American film director, writer, model, actor and musician

SOMA Interview

“There are photographs under the pistol, showing his mother genitals. These genitals make no perceptible impression on him, though it was through them that he first entered the world.”

Elfriede Jelinek book Wonderful, Wonderful Times

248
Wonderful, Wonderful Times (1990)

World

“On his neglect of being a rock star: There’s a certain discipline about being a rock star, and I don’t have it. If I was a rock star, I wouldn’t have let a photographer in here, dressed like this. I’d have been down the hairdressers. You try and get Sting to do something without 15 advisors. These boys are like Russian princes…”

Chris Rea (1951) English singer-songwriter

2015

Star , Boy

“My deepest intention is that some day a sufferer, no matter how afflicted, will be able to look at a painting, at a photograph, and be instantly healed. That is my ultimate hope. Not to be realized in this life, maybe, but that is what I believe art can do.”

John Diamond (doctor) (1934) Australian doctor

Source: Art for Healing: Guided Painting Then and Now (2011), p. 39

Life , Hope , Art , Affliction

“Unless in fact he had a very dim memory of her and the photograph had blown on the tiny little ember of his connection with his granny, like a faint orange glow in a heap of soft grey ash, and for a moment he really could remember when he had sat on his granny’s lap and smiled at her and patted her wrinkly old face — his mother said he smiled at her and she was really pleased.”

Edward St. Aubyn (1960) British writer

At Last, Chapter 10

Smile , Memory

“It's the bane of existence for anyone in comedy. 'The photograph must be funny!' So the people coordinating the shoot throw rubber chickens at you, 20 at a time. Or put a feathered hat on you. Or give you a clown nose. Of course, all of this makes you depressed, so you wind up looking more like you're promoting A Long Day's Journey Into Night.”

Martin Short (1950) Canadian stand-up comedian

"Hot Seat", Time Out New York; Issue 565: July 27–August 2, 2006

People , Time , Night

“If we are to select our subjects or arrange our groups with a pictorial motive we must absolutely and entirely sacrifice every other consideration, and be prepared to cut out of our composition the prettiest and most interesting item, if by so doing composition pure and simple is improved. And if some subject you are attached to will not admit of composition or will not admit of your treating it pictorially, then photograph it if you wish, but never suppose that it will form a picture.”

Alfred Horsley Hinton (1863–1908) British photographer

Source: Practical Pictorial Photography, 1898, Methods - The practical application of means to end, p. 29

Motivation

“I have often thought that if photography were difficult in the true sense of the term — meaning that the creation of a simple photograph would entail as much time and effort as the production of a good watercolor or etching — there would be a vast improvement in total output. The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.”

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) American photographer and environmentalist

"A Personal Credo" (1943), published in American Annual of Photography (1944), reprinted in Nathan Lyons, editor, Photographers on Photography (1966), reprinted in Vicki Goldberg, editor, Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present (1988)

Sense , Effort , Time

“Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am in the position of a pilot without his checklist, so I’ll have to wing it a bit. … [Prior to the Apollo missions, ] no one knew what kind of person could be persuaded to take the trip. Prisoners were suggested. Soldiers could be ordered. Photographers could take pictures — and they’re expendable. Doctors understood the limits of human physiology. Finally, both sides picked pilots.”

Neil Armstrong (1930–2012) American astronaut; first person to walk on the moon

On being awarded a Congressional Gold Medal on (21 July 2009)

Personality

“The purpose of photography is the transmission of a visualized sector of life through the medium of the camera into a mental process that starts with the photographer's thinking about the subject he photographs and is continued in the mind of the spectator.”

Roman Vishniac (1897–1990) American photographer

Deschin, Jacob. "Nature as it is". New York Times (1857-Current file); Feb 3, 1952; Proquest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851 - 2002) pg. X14

Life , Thinking

“The President's party arrived in three planes with thirty-fie reporters and photographers. As I shook hands with Mr. Truman, he remarked, "I've been a long time meeting you, General." I replied, "I hope it won't be so long next time."”

Douglas MacArthur (1880–1964) U.S. Army general of the army, field marshal of the Army of the Philippines

But there was never to be a next time.
Source: Reminiscences (1964), p. 361

Hope , Time

“The range of H 1255 is only four tenths of a magnitude, and on account of its brightness it is difficult to observe on all plates except those taken with the 1-inch Cooke lens. It seemed necessary, therefore, to take unusual precautions in order to secure accurate observations, and to give each one its full weight. Accordingly, one hundred and thirty six photographs were selected, including nearly all of those taken with the Cooke lens, and also those taken with the 8 inch Bache Telescope on which the variable was certainly faint. Four independent estimates of brightness were made on each plate, and means were taken, thus reducing the probable error one half. The phase was computed for each observation, thus covering all parts of the light curve. …H 1255 and H 1303 differ from the other variables in a marked degree as in each case the duration of the phase of minimum is very long in proportion to the length of the period. This fact led to considerable difficulty in determining their periods as they were apparently at their minimum brightness for some time before and after the actual minima occurred. In H 1255, the change in brightness is obviously continuous throughout the period, although it is much more rapid near minimum than near maximum. This is clearly seen in Plate IV, Figs. 5 and 6.”

Henrietta Swan Leavitt (1868–1921) astronomer

"Ten Variable Stars of the Algol Type" http://books.google.com/books?id=UkdWAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA87 (1908) Annals of the Astronomical Observatory of Harvard College Vol.60. No.5

Error , Light , Change , Time

“The collective name for the ripe fruits of religion in a character is Saintliness. The saintly character is the character for which spiritual emotions are the habitual centre of the personal energy; and there is a certain composite photograph of universal saintliness, the same in all religions, of which the features can easily be traced.”

William James (1842–1910) American philosopher, psychologist, and pragmatist

Lectures XI, XII, and XIII, "Saintliness"
1900s, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)

Religion , Universe , Personality

“Book-to-screen adaptations must always strive for two things: First, you must find a way to tell the broad story of the original plot; second, you must somehow reflect the spirit and texture of the novel—that is, you must transform a lot of words into a few pictures. All those digressions, inner monologues, thought processes, turns of phrase, all those word pictures, and especially all that un-photographable stuff that made the novel so delicious, must somehow be represented onscreen by use of the filmmaker's tools: moving pictures, dialogue and performance, sets, costumes, music and all the other tricks of the trade. That's the process a writer must go through to create a successful blueprint for a film.”

Tommy Lee Wallace (1949) American film director

Tommy Lee Wallace on Crafting His Miniseries Masterpiece, IT https://dailydead.com/stephen-king-week-tommy-lee-wallace-on-crafting-his-miniseries-masterpiece-it/ (October 27, 2015)

Books , Music , Way , Success

“Using the scanty means at my disposal I attempted to paint the room together with several objects that I had gathered together, white on white. The white room is an interior to be made devoid of any specific sensualism emanated by objects. Ultimately it is a classic white canvas expanded into three-dimensional space. It was in these surroundings that I rolled across the room, my body wrapped up in pieces of white cloth like a pile of parcels. The pieces of cloth unwound themselves from my tense body, which for a long time remained in a catatonic position, with the soles of both my feet stuck as it were to the wall. […] I had planned to do some bodypainting for the second part of the performance. […] At first I poured black paint over the white objects, I painted Anni with the aim of making a “living painting”. But gradually a certain uncertainty crept in. This was caused by jealous fight between two photographers, which ended by one of them leaving the room in a rage. […] My unease increased, as I became aware of the defects in my “score”-and should this not have any, the mistakes in the way I was translating it into actions. Recognising this, I succumbed to a fit of painting which was like an instinct breaking through. I jammed myself into a step-ladder that had fallen over and on which I had previously done the most dreadful gymnastic exercises, and daubed the walls in frantic despair-until I was exhausted. The very last hour of “informel.””

Günter Brus (1938) Austrian artist

Mühl angrily ridiculed my relapse into a “technique” that had to be overcome.
Source: Nervous Stillness on the Horizon (2006), P. 120 (1985)

Way , Exercises , Rage , Time

“…the famous assertion by Einstein that the length of a rod depends on its velocity and on the chosen definition of simultaneity. …is based on the fact that we do not measure the length of the rod, but its projection on a system at rest. How the length of the projection depends on the choice of simultaneity can be illustrated by reference to a photograph taken through a focal-plane shutter. Such a shutter… consists of a wide band with a horizontal slit, which slides down vertically. Different bands are photographed successively on the film. Moving objects are therefore strangely distorted; the wheels of a rapidly moving car for instance, appear to be slanted. The shape of the objects in the picture will evidently depend on the speed of the shutter. Similarly, the length of the moving segment depends on the definition of simultaneity. One definition of simultaneity differs from another because events that are simultaneous for one definition occur successively for another. What may be a simultaneity projection of a moving segment for one definition is a "focal-plane shutter photograph" for another.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Cars , Appearance , Success , Dependency

“The Jews of the shtetls that Tolstoy remembered were saints… the people I photographed were saints. So now, in 1983, I tell the world: When you learn about Goethe, don't forget to study the Holocaust, too.”

Roman Vishniac (1897–1990) American photographer

Testament to a Lost People

People , World , Study , Learning

“I was bombarded with TV sets and magazines, by the excess of the world. I thought an honest work should incorporate all of these elements, which were and are a reality [referring to the use of photo-silkscreens, made from published photographs of persons, events, disasters, Rauschenberg started to use in his art, after 1961]”

Robert Rauschenberg (1925–2008) American artist

Source: 1990's, Rauschenberg, Art and Live, 1990, p. 99

World , Art , Photo , Reality

“We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the sign started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides -- pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book. "No one sees the barn," he said finally. A long silence followed. "Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn." He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced by others. We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies." There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides. "Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. It literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism."”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Another silence ensued. "They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.”
White Noise (1984)

People , Books , Cars , Color

“The eye instinctively looks for analogies and amplifies them, so that a face imagined in the pattern of a wallpaper may become more vivid than a photograph.”

Kenneth Clark (1903–1983) Art historian, broadcaster and museum director

Source: The Nude: A Study in Ideal Form (1951), Ch. IX: The Nude As an End in Itself

Imagination

“I began in 1976, with small abstract paintings that allowed me to do what I had never let myself do: put something down at random. And then, of course, I realized that it never can be random. It was all a way of opening a door for me. If I don't know what's coming – that is, if I have no hard-and-fast image, as I have with a photographic original – then arbitrary choice and chance play an important part.”

Gerhard Richter (1932) German visual artist, born 1932

Quote from an interview with Sabine Schütz, 1990; as cited on collected quotes on the website of Gerhard Richter: on 'Abstract paintings' https://www.gerhard-richter.com/en/quotes/subjects-2/abstract-paintings-7
1990's

Way , Chance , Parting , Painting

“Each of these men made a real contribution to the Nazi plan. Each man had a key part. Deprive the Nazi regime of the functions performed by a Schacht, a Sauckel, a Von Papen, or a Goering and you have a different regime. Look down the rows of fallen men and picture them as the photographic and documentary evidence shows them to have been in their days of power. Is there one who did not substantially advance the conspiracy along its bloody path toward its bloody goal? Can we assume that the great effort of these men's lives was directed toward ends they never suspected?”

Robert H. Jackson (1892–1954) American judge

Summation for the Prosecution, July 26, 1946
Quotes from the Nuremberg Trials (1945-1946)

Men , Effort , Parting

“I didn't worry about getting Tenzing to take a photograph of me — as far as I knew, he had never taken a photograph before, and the summit of Everest was hardly the place to show him how.”

Edmund Hillary (1919–2008) New Zealand mountaineer

On the photograph of Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay at the summit of Everest, in "Adventure's End" in The Norton Book of Sports (1992) edited by George Plimpton, p. 86
Context: Tenzing had been waiting patiently, but now, at my request, he unfurled the flags wrapped around his ice–axe and standing at the summit, held them above his head. Clad in all his bulky equipment and with the flags flapping furiously in the wind, he made a dramatic picture, and the thought drifted through my mind that this photograph should be a good one if it came out at all. I didn't worry about getting Tenzing to take a photograph of me — as far as I knew, he had never taken a photograph before, and the summit of Everest was hardly the place to show him how.

“I do not photograph nature. I photograph my visions. Quoted in”

Man Ray (1890–1976) American artist and photographer

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/americanmasters/episodes/man-ray/prophet-of-the-avant-garde/510/ PBS episode of American Masters

Nature

“They are fighting for access to the laboratories where photographs are retouched and biographies and histories rewritten.”

Milan Kundera book The Book of Laughter and Forgetting

Part I: Lost Letters (p. 22)
The Book of Laughter and Forgetting (1979)
Context: People are always shouting they want to create a better future. It's not true. The future is an apathetic void of no interest to anyone. The past is full of life, eager to irritate us, provoke and insult us, tempt us to destroy or repaint it. The only reason people want to be masters of the future is to change the past. They are fighting for access to the laboratories where photographs are retouched and biographies and histories rewritten.

History , Fight

“It is virtually impossible at this distance merely by reading, or listening, or even seeing photographs or motion pictures, to grasp at all the real significance of the situation. And yet the whole world of the future hangs on a proper judgment.”

George Marshall (1880–1959) US military leader, Army Chief of Staff

The Marshall Plan Speech (1947)
Context: An essential part of any successful action on the part of the United States is an understanding on the part of the people of America of the character of the problem and the remedies to be applied. Political passion and prejudice should have no part. With foresight, and a willingness on the part of our people to face up to the vast responsibility which history has clearly placed upon our country, the difficulties I have outlined can and will be overcome.... to my mind, it is of vast importance that our people reach some general understanding of what the complications really are, rather than react from a passion or a prejudice or an emotion of the moment. As I said more formally a moment ago, we are remote from the scene of these troubles. It is virtually impossible at this distance merely by reading, or listening, or even seeing photographs or motion pictures, to grasp at all the real significance of the situation. And yet the whole world of the future hangs on a proper judgment.

World , Reading , Future

“I'm often asked by students how a photographer gets over the fear and uneasiness in many people about facing a camera, and I just say that any sensitive man is bothered by a thing like that unless the motive is so strong and the belief in what he’s doing is so strong that it doesn’t matter. The important thing is to do the picture. And I advise people who are bothered by this to cure it by saying to themselves, what I’m doing is harmless to these people really, and there’s no malevolence in it and there’s no deception in it, and it is done in a great tradition, examples of which are Daumier and Goya. Daumier’s Third Class Carriage is a kind of snapshot of some actual people sitting in a railway carriage in France in eighteen-something.”

Walker Evans (1903–1975) American photographer

As quoted in: Bruce Jackson (1987) Fieldwork, p. 87

People , Fear , Motivation , Strong

“I like photographing the people I love, the people I admire, the famous, and especially the infamous.”

Helmut Newton (1920–2004) German-Australian photographer

As quoted in Photo (2005) by Graphis Inc. http://books.google.com/books?id=m9RTAAAAMAAJ&q=%22Le+Pen+adored
Context: I like photographing the people I love, the people I admire, the famous, and especially the infamous. My last infamous subject was the extreme right wing French politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. Even when I am not in sympathy with the person, I have to be in love with him or her while I'm doing their portrait. Le Pen adored me (at least until his photo ran alongside Hitler's in Le Monde), and we got on extremely well.

Love , People

“In photographing dwarfs, you don't get majesty & beauty. You get dwarfs.”

Susan Sontag book On Photography

On Photography (1977)
Context: Whitman thought he was not abolishing beauty but generalizing it. So, for generations, did the most gifted American photographers, in their polemical pursuit of the trivial and the vulgar. But among American photographers who have matured since World War II, the Whitmanesque mandate to record in its entirety the extravagant candors of actual American experience has gone sour. In photographing dwarfs, you don't get majesty & beauty. You get dwarfs.

"America, Seen Through Photographs, Darkly", p. 29

Beauty

“The photographer in Blow-Up, who is not a philosopher, wants to see things closer up. But it so happens that, by enlarging too far, the object itself decomposes and disappears.”

Michelangelo Antonioni (1912–2007) Italian film director and screenwriter

On his film Blow-Up, as quoted in Michelangelo Antonioni : The Complete Films (2004) edited by Seymour Chatman and Paul Duncan, p. 113
Context: The photographer in Blow-Up, who is not a philosopher, wants to see things closer up. But it so happens that, by enlarging too far, the object itself decomposes and disappears. Hence there's a moment in which we grasp reality, but then the moment passes. This was in part the meaning of Blow-Up.

“Who photographs kebabs?”

Bill Bailey (1965) English comedian, musician, actor, TV and radio presenter and author

Cosmic Jam (tour 1995, DVD 2005, 2006)

“Being photographed does not make a man a good writer. It doesn't make a man anything.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

“When you photograph people in color, you photograph their clothes. But when you photograph people in Black and white, you photograph their souls!”

Тед Грант (1913–2006) South African activist

People , Color , Soul , Clothes

“When I was writing it, I was remembering how hard it was to be a 16-year-old in high school. I always wanted to be an artist, so I was this loner kid who just got drunk all the time. I only had one real friend. There was a girl I really liked, and she ended up taking really sleazy photographs with her boyfriend, and that really crushed me, I was just swimming in this pit of despair, jealousy and alcoholism.”

Джерард Артур Уэй (1977)

Alcohol , Jealousy , School , Girl

“Look what they have said about the space craft photos which show objects entirely different from any made on Earth—and which have been photographed by many people in different parts of the world! So, no matter how you look at it, unless the person himself has that something necessary to recognize truth, it would make no difference what was presented as evidence, he still would want concrete proof to suit his own understanding, ignoring all the other minds in the world.”

George Adamski (1891–1965) American ufologist

Inside the Spaceships

Photo , Understanding , Personality , People

“I have been taking these photographs as I am dead, and then I look back at these photographs to re-experience what it was like, as someone who experienced themselves as a dead person. And they’re the same. It’s very much the same experience, just one is visual and one is more verbal. Both are ways to get through a very difficult experience, and they’re also ways to remember it.”

Esmé Weijun Wang American writer

On using various mediums to highlight an experience in “Schizophrenia Terrifies: An Interview with Esmé Weijun Wang” https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2019/02/04/schizophrenia-terrifies-an-interview-with-esme-weijun-wang/ in The Paris Review (2019 Feb 4)

Way , Personality , Dead

“When I left South Texas, I realized that I became the other. I was the token of the room. Most of my friends were white so when I went to a party or a wedding or a work function, I would scan the room and only see my face in the people who were serving the drinks or passing around the appetizers. I realized I was the hanging fruit in the room, the living and breathing statue in the room, the object in the middle of the photograph, surrounded by white eyes.”

Mando Alvarado actor

On one of the inspirations behind his play Living Sculpture in “SIN MUROS: INTERVIEW WITH “LIVING SCULPTURE” PLAYWRIGHT MANDO ALVARADO” https://thetheatretimes.com/sin-muros-interview-living-sculpture-playwright-mando-alvarado/ in The Theatre Times

Drink , Wedding , People

“Men are like May-flies. The most of them see things only during the brief breath of a day. The ages of history and biology are unknown and unconsidered. No wonder the universe is misunderstood. The human mind is without longitude. Even a cannonball, photographed with an exposure of one-five-thousandth of a second, seems suspended in mid-air.”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Discovering Darwin", Proceedings of the International Anti-Vivisection and Animal Protection congress, held at Washington, D.C. December 8th to 11th, 1913 (1913), p. 152

Universe , Age , History , Men

“Members of Congress had to surrender their phones before today’s CBP trip.But @JoaquinCastrotx was able to get a device in. This photo is of the women we spoke to. We asked their permission to photograph - they said yes, please share what’s happening.”

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (1989) American politician

Twitter, https://twitter.com/AOC/status/1145840530624077825 (1 July 2019)
Twitter Quotes (2019), July 2019

Photo , Women

“A couple of weeks ago, the 21-year-old was photographed with her feet up while watching a colleague playing in an international exhibition match in Perth, and the proximity of her toes to a nearby Indian flag raised temperatures in her home state to vindaloo levels.”

Sania Mirza (1986) Indian tennis player

Martin Johnson in: Sania Mirza is failing to fly the flag for India http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/tennis/australianopen/2289112/Sania-Mirza-is-failing-to-fly-the-flag-for-India.html, The Telegraph, 16 January 2008

Home

“This Reger is a sarcastic, churlish fellow, bitter and pedantic and rude. He is a sort of musical Cyclops, a strong, ugly creature bulging with knotty and unshapely muscles, an ogre of composition. In listening to these works…one is perforce reminded of the photograph of Reger which his publishers place on the cover of their catalogue of his works, the photograph that shows something that is like a swollen, myopic beetle with thick lips and sullen expression, crouching on an organ bench.”

Max Reger (1873–1916) German composer, pianist and conductor

Anonymous article in Musical Portraits (1920), as quoted in Lexicon of Musical Invective: Critical Assaults on Composers Since Beethoven's Time (1965) by Nicolas Slonimsky, p.120

Music , Strong

“You read a lot of crap about photographic craftsmanship in those days, and technique; but you didnt hear shit about vision. I knew that I had an eye, a gift for seeing where the ripped edges of the world begin to peel away and something else shows through.”

Elizabeth Hand book Generation Loss

Source: Generation Loss (2007), Ch. 1

World , Reading

“When I was young, there was an amazing publication called The Whole Earth Catalog, which was one of the bibles of my generation. It was created by a fellow named Stewart Brand not far from here in Menlo Park, and he brought it to life with his poetic touch. This was in the late 1960's, before personal computers and desktop publishing, so it was all made with typewriters, scissors, and Polaroid cameras. It was sort of like Google in paperback form, 35 years before Google came along: it was idealistic, and overflowing with neat tools and great notions. Stewart and his team put out several issues of The Whole Earth Catalog, and then when it had run its course, they put out a final issue. It was the mid-1970s, and I was your age. On the back cover of their final issue was a photograph of an early morning country road, the kind you might find yourself hitchhiking on if you were so adventurous. Beneath it were the words: "Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish."”

Steve Jobs (1955–2011) American entrepreneur and co-founder of Apple Inc.

It was their farewell message as they signed off. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish. And I have always wished that for myself. And now, as you graduate to begin anew, I wish that for you. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.
2000s, Address at Stanford University (2005)

Personality , Life , Age , Country

“Well, apparently, I was instantly a sensation. Even Life Magazine came and photographed me — five pages in Life ... fan clubs all over the world ... almost immediately, I was blacklisted and never worked again — except, once, for Liberace.”

Maila Nurmi (1922–2008) Finnish-American actress

[Vampira in "The Haunted World of Ed Wood", 20 March 2017, The-Vampira-Show.tumblr, YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdfGJOaUPlw] (quote at 3:22)

World , Life

“Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, we shall, in an emotional sense, acquire an additional dimension... Once let the sheer isolation of the Earth become plain to every man, whatever his nationality or creed, and a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.”

Fred Hoyle (1915–2001) British astronomer

1948

Sense , Idea , History

“…When I recall the war, I recall it in images, not verbally or by text. That’s what really comes to me: fragmented images, much like photographs…”

Rawi Hage (1964) Canadian writer

On how memory plays into his works in “‘What I Fear Most is Homogeneity’: An Interview with Rawi Hage” https://hazlitt.net/feature/what-i-fear-most-homogeneity-interview-rawi-hage in Hazlitt (2018 Sep 12)

War

“We have this culture of men, especially, watching pornography, but then [they are] offended by a classic nude portrait or photograph, and I've never felt that way.”

Emily Ratajkowski (1991) American model and actress

Way , Men

“Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer,
I was taken by a photograph of you.
There were one or two I know
That you would have liked a little more,
But they didn't show your spirit quite as true.
You were turning round to see who was behind you
And I took your childish laughter by surprise,
And at the moment that my camera happened to find you
There was just a trace of sorrow in your eyes.”

Jackson Browne (1948) American singer-songwriter

"Fountain of Sorrow"
("Fountain of Sorrow" on YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XaoHbNNK58k
Late for the Sky (1974)

Laughter

“I think the whole movement of #MeToo is not just calling out the sexual harassers, which is really important, but also crying out that we want equal pay, equal representation, equal opportunities, and that we want to see more female directors and photographers.”

Jamie Chung (1983) American actress

As quoted in "#MeToo not just about calling out sexual harassers" in The Korea Times (31 March 2018) http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/art/2018/04/398_245997.html?utm_source=dable

Thinking , Cry

“My 'idea' has always been my passion. Not only do I have to be a good photographer technically, but also have to be able to capture the emotion of the moment.”

Austin Cofran

Idea , Passion

“I think anyone can make one, two great photographs. It is the endeavor, the sustained effort and exploration of an idea or a subject that is more significant.”

An-My Lê (1960) American photographer

Interview with Daylight Books (1 October 2017)

Idea , Thinking , Effort

“The one constant in my life is the landscape, in a broad sense of the word. I love the openness of the land and worry about how we’ve built our lives upon it, how little we maintain it, and how we assault it. It’s one reason for me to want to photograph it.”

An-My Lê (1960) American photographer

Interview with ARTNews (3 March 2020)

Sense , Love , Life

“Finally, to help the memories came a machine, the photographic device, once bulky like a piece of furniture in the middle of the room, today light, shiny and precise as a weapon. Precise. And faithful?”

Paolo Monti (1908–1982) Italian photographer

"Mariel", in Camera, n. 10, October 1956; quoted in Conversazioni https://www.beic.it/mostre/monti/conversazioni.html, BEIC.
Original: (it) Finalmente ad aiutare i ricordi venne una macchina, l'apparecchio fotografico un tempo ingombrante come un mobile in mezzo alla stanza, oggi leggero, lucido e preciso come un'arma. Preciso. E fedele?

Light , Memory , Faith , Help

“I have an undeveloped photographic memory.”

Ron English (1959) American artist

Ron English's Fauxlosophy: Volume 2 (2022)

Memory

“Traditional photojournalists arrive with an idea of what they are going to produce or what the editor wants. I approach a subject very much as a street photographer and a wanderer, without preconceptions. I try to leave it extremely intuitive and exploratory.”

Alex Webb (photographer) (1952) American photojournalist

citation needed

Idea

“I only know how to approach a place by walking. For what does a street photographer do but walk and watch and wait and talk, and then watch and wait some more, trying to remain confident that the unexpected, the unknown, or the secret heat of the known awaits just around the corner.”

Alex Webb (photographer) (1952) American photojournalist

Source: Bubacz, Kate (June 6, 2017). "6 Photographers On What It Means To Be Close Enough" https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/katebubacz/get-closer. BuzzFeed.

Confidence , Secret , Waiting

Quotes about photographer page 4

Quotes about photographer
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