Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I believe that the medium of photography prevails entirely as an act of faith in the souls of those who love and practice it. And so every photograph becomes another subtle variation on the theme of the medium itself.
When I make a photograph I want it to be an altogether new object, complete and self-contained, whose basic condition is order (unlike the world of events and actions whose permanent condition is change and disorder).
The changes taking place in this part of Europe are enormous and very rapid. One world is disappearing. I am trying to photograph what's left. I have always been drawn to what is ending, what will soon no longer exist.
There are religions in which the representation of the world is banned as an usurpation of the power of a God, creator of all things. It is very possible that photography is a trick of the devil and each shot is a sin.
The basic material of photographs is not intrinsically beautiful. It's not like ivory or tapestry or bronze or oil on canvas. You're not supposed to look at the thing, you're supposed to look through it. It's a window.
Words are difficult and photography takes the words away from things. It's difficult to talk about something that seems to come very naturally to you, to explain a process. A moment is really difficult to put on paper.
Part of the fascination that photography holds is its ability to unlock secrets kept even from ourselves. Like dreams, the photograph can uncork a heady bouquet of recognition which can escape into the cognitive world.
When I was working with Robert Frank, he told me that there was absolutely no relationship between cinema and photography. I challenge that. Surely what you know as a photographer must impact how you set up your shots.
I started out doing music videos and photography, and I always loved writing. Filmmaking seemed to be a good compilation of all these skills in a way that allowed me to tell a story “greater than the sum of its parts.”
Computer enhancement has spread to still photography in advertisements, fashion pictorials, and magazine covers, where the human figure and face are subtly elongated or remodeled at will. Caricature is our ruling mode.
Although I get a lot of ideas from things that have happened in my life, I see the final product as a place where my imagination meets my experience. What I love about photography is that nothing is really as it seems.
The camera creates a magical transformation. It's not enough to exist; we must chronicle that existence. ... Narrative- and image-making creatures like humans don't feel any experience is complete unless it's recorded.
I started out doing music videos and photography, and I always loved writing. Filmmaking seemed to be a good compilation of all these skills in a way that allowed me to tell a story 'greater than the sum of its parts.'
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.
People are always trying to find the next groovy thing, and it hasn't gone back to painting... I'd like it to go back to painting. I'm sick of all this photography and video. There's so much of it, it's almost annoying.
When I was in art school, the photo kids were separated from the rest. If you did sculpture or painting or graphic design, you were all taking the same classes, but the photographers just went straight into photography.
I've enjoyed photography, ever since I was a teenager, and I'm still at it. I've had shows in various cities, around the country, and I have a number of pieces in permanent collections in museums that I'm very proud of.
I have no chips on my shoulder. I like to be constructive. As I have said, I have inspired many persons to take up photography. As a matter of fact, I inspire myself. (When I take a good picture I give myself a bonus.).
I believe there is no more creative medium than photography to recreate the living world of our time. Photography gladly accepts the challenge because it is at home in its element: namely, realism - real life - the now.
My wife convinced me to try doing the restorations digitally. I thought I could learn the photo editing software over the Thanksgiving weekend. It took me until May of the next year before I sold anything I did with it.
What I believe is really good in the so-called documentary approach to photography is the addition of lyricism.[this quality] is usually produced unconsciously and even unintentionally and accidentally by the cameraman.
Obviously, we can see what was in front of the camera, but if a photograph is honestly made, it's a bit of a self-portrait. I think it's impossible for a photographer who is working honestly to keep this from happening.
... the reason we think that computer graphics technology has succeeded in faking reality is that we, over the course of the last hundred and fifty years, have come to accept the image of photography and film as reality.
I think the greatest photographers are the amateur photographers who do it because they love it. Arnold Newman is a good example; he is a consummate professional, but he's also an 'amateur' in the pure sense of the word.
The photographs that excite me are photographs that say something in a new manner; not for the sake of being different but ones that are different because the individual is different and the individual expresses himself.
My paintings have an ongoing dialogue with photography. There are many painters who would say the same, I'm sure. The difference is that I'm thinking more about the temporal aspect of photography, rather than the visual.
I am not interested in repetition. I don't want to reach the point from where I wouldn't know how to go further. It's good to set limits for oneself, but there comes a moment when we must destroy what we have constructed.
In stamping photography with the patent of realism, society does nothing but confirm itself in the tautological certainty that an image of reality that conforms to its own representation of objectivity is truly objective.
I would warn very sincerely against the pitfalls of copying photographs. A frozen, split-second bears little relationship to the continuing process of living reality. It is better to look, look again, and keep on looking.
I started photography more or less by accident when I was already 27. I was taken on as an assistant by a photographer who was a friend of a friend and I very quickly understood the potential of expression in photography.
So when I became interested in photography and further being inspired by the work that I saw of Ansel and others, it was a natural extension to go back to these places that I knew as a kid and explore them with my camera.
To me, Celine is unrivaled, and Hedi Slimane has such a multifaceted talent - from clothing design to photography. He creates this rare, incredible, and desirable world through his vision. I'm always inspired by his work.
Some have said that if you take a great picture in color and take away the color, you'll have a great black-and-white picture. But if you're shooting something about color and you take away the color, you'll have nothing.
Photography has fooled the world. There's no more convincing fraud. Its images are nothing but the expression of the invisible man working behind the camera. They are not reality, they form part of the language of culture.
There are people who expect me to look the way I do on-screen, where I have a great director of photography and fantastic lighting. I'm sorry to disappoint people, but I don't look like that all the time - no actress does.
I think that digital is offering many great possibilities for cinematographers. Particularly in urban cityscapes and low light photography its allowing us to render what we actually see with our eyes; which is interesting.
Anyone can take pictures. What's difficult is thinking about them, organizing them, and trying to use them in some way so that some meaning can be constructed out of them. That's really where the work of the artist begins.
You're suddenly seeing the coherence and the interconnectedness of everything, left to right, top to bottom, front to back. It's all connected, and, somehow, it's all in balance. And that's, of course, when you go, 'Yes!'.
You've got a number of things that take place that are peculiar to still photography. One: how a picture looks - what you photograph is responsible for how a photograph looks. In other words, it's responsible for the form.
A portrait photographer depends upon another person to complete his picture. The subject imagined, which in a sense is me, must be discovered in someone else willing to take part in a fiction he cannot possibly know about.
The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer's understanding of his subject and mastery of his process.
Photography is the art of anticipation, not working with memories, but showing their formation. As such, it has relentlessly usurped imaginative and critical prerogatives of older, slower literature and handmade visual art.
A photographic session is a joint, interpersonal exchange, a kind of creative encounter session at a high level of intensity. For me, photography is more a process of creating an experience than one of looking for pictures.
Sometimes they are a matter of luck; the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates.
My programme, The Art of Creative Expression, empowers young people with tools to express themselves. We teach photography, art and drama, but it's not just the medium that's important, it's about what you are trying to say.
One very important difference between color and monochromatic photography is this: in black and white you suggest; in color you state. Much can be implied by suggestion, but statement demands certainty... absolute certainty.
When you shoot, that is opportunity number one to make a statement. When you edit, you have opportunity number two to make your statement. It could be an affirmation of your first choice or could go off in another direction.
For black folks, the camera provided a means to document a reality that could, if necessary, be packed, stored, moved from place to place... [Photography] offered a way to contain memories, to overcome loss, to keep history.
Oh my goodness gracious, what you can buy off the Internet in terms of overhead photography. A trained ape can know an awful lot of what is going on in this world, just by punching on his mouse, for a relatively modest cost.
To me, photography is 90% a retrospective experience. There's the part of pursuing the image, and exposing the film, but once you make the exposure, you're always looking backwards in time. I like that aspect of photography.