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Quotes by Photographer
"You do your work as a photographer and everything becomes past. Words are more like thoughts; the photographer's picture is always surrounded by a kind of romantic glamor - no matter what you do, and how you twist it."
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"When I started working for Rolling Stone, I became very interested in journalism and thought maybe that's what I was doing, but it wasn't."
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"A positive attitude can really make dreams come true - it did for me."
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"I had to go. A spirit in my feet said 'Go,' and I went."
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"What I learned from Lennon was something that did stay with me my whole career, which is to be very straightforward. I actually love talking about taking pictures, and I think that helps everyone."
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"I am drawn to Christ but I have real problems with the Catholic Church."
17
"Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes."
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"I've created a vocabulary of different styles. I draw from many different ways to take a picture. Sometimes I go back to reportage, to journalism."
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"More varied than any landscape was the landscape in the sky, with islands of gold and silver, peninsulas of apricot and rose against a background of many shades of turquoise and azure."
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"If I didn't have my camera to remind me constantly, I am here to do this, I would eventually have slipped away, I think. I would have forgotten my reason to exist."
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"I've been working with the land for most of my life; walking it and photographing it. And I love it to bits."
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"It's a heavy weight, the camera. Now we have modern and lightweight, small plastic cameras, but in the '70s they were heavy metal."
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"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."
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"Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself."
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"In photography, the smallest thing can be a great subject. The little, human detail can become a Leitmotiv."
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"People gave us everything for free. We were allowed only so much film per picture, but there was no limit to the creativity. I like to say that they let us loose like wild dogs in the streets of Paris."
16
"My surprises come usually once I start rolling and photographing."
16
"I don't love the world. I think Jupiter should have hit us."
16
"If I am at a party, I want to be at the party. Too many photographers use the camera to avoid participating in things. They become professional observers."
16
"I'd like to think that the actions we take today will allow others in the future to discover the wonders of landscapes we helped protect but never had the chance to enjoy ourselves."
16
"But I wanted marriage for myself. I was not calculating about it. I wish I was more calculating."
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"It is a sign of a dull nature to occupy oneself deeply in matters that concern the body; for instance, to be over much occupied about exercise, about eating and drinking, about easing oneself, about sexual intercourse."
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"I think that cognitive scientists would support the view that our visual system does not directly represent what is out there in the world and that our brain constructs a lot of the imagery that we believe we are seeing."
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"A lot of people think that when you have grand scenery, such as you have in Yosemite, that photography must be easy."
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"I should try to get some sleep as one doesn't know what tomorrow may bring."
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"The negative is comparable to the composer's score and the print to its performance. Each performance differs in subtle ways."
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"It's hard to watch something go on and be talking at the same time."
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"Sell the public flowers... things that they can hang on their walls without being uptight."
16
"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."
16
"I found myself serving a sentence of public denial from the very second the raid on my apartment happened."
16
"In a portrait, you have room to have a point of view. The image may not be literally what's going on, but it's representative."
16
"I would say that the war correspondent gets more drinks, more girls, better pay, and greater freedom than the soldier, but at this stage of the game, having the freedom to choose his spot and being allowed to be a coward and not be executed for it is his torture."
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"When I'm ready to make a photograph, I think I quite obviously see in my minds eye something that is not literally there in the true meaning of the word. I'm interested in something which is built up from within, rather than just extracted from without."
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"My mind is vacant on names, but I know him as well as anything. When I need names they drop out of my head; when I don't need them they drop back."
16
"The marvels of daily life are exciting; no movie director can arrange the unexpected that you find in the street."
Life,
16
"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."
16
"If slaughterhouses had glass walls the whole world would be vegetarian."
16
"I'd become sort of involved in things that were happening to people. No matter what color they be, whether they be Indians, or Negroes, the poor white person or anyone who was I thought more or less getting a bad shake."
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"Nature is so powerful, so strong. Capturing its essence is not easy - your work becomes a dance with light and the weather. It takes you to a place within yourself."
16
"I am obsessed with beauty. I want everything to be perfect, and of course it isn't. And that's a tough place to be because you're never satisfied."
16
"I bought my first camera in Seattle, Washington. Only paid about seven dollars and fifty cents for it."
15
"Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience. Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life. They're aristocrats."
15
"Perhaps the world's second-worst crime is boredom; the first is being a bore."
15
"When I have had such men before my camera my whole soul has endeavored to do its duty towards them in recording faithfully the greatness of the inner as well as the features of the outer man. The photograph thus taken has been almost the embodiment of a prayer."
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"My hope is that we continue to nurture the places that we love, but that we also look outside our immediate worlds."
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"And in fact I don't believe there is such a thing as a definitive picture of something. The land is a living, breathing thing and light changes its character every second of every day. That's why I love it so much."
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"They were without clothes before I got there, and they were without clothes when I left."
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