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Quotes by Photographer
"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."
4
"When I have sex with someone I forget who I am. For a minute I even forget I'm human. It's the same thing when I'm behind a camera. I forget I exist."
4
"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."
4
"These days, most nature photographers are deeply committed to the environmental message."
4
"This AIDS stuff is pretty scary. I hope I don't get it."
4
"Sell the public flowers... things that they can hang on their walls without being uptight."
4
"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."
4
"I found myself serving a sentence of public denial from the very second the raid on my apartment happened."
4
"These people live again in print as intensely as when their images were captured on old dry plates of sixty years ago... I am walking in their alleys, standing in their rooms and sheds and workshops, looking in and out of their windows. Any they in turn seem to be aware of me."
4
"Every ten years a man should give himself a good kick in the pants."
4
"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."
4
"The one image that's been causing a lot of discussion is one image that I shot of a man falling head-first from the building, before the buildings fell down. He was trapped in the fire, and decided to jump and take his own life, rather than being burned."
4
"The use of the term art medium is, to say the least, misleading, for it is the artist that creates a work of art not the medium. It is the artist in photography that gives form to content by a distillation of ideas, thought, experience, insight and understanding."
4
"I always thought I was good. That's why it was so frustrating when other people didn't agree."
4
"Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art."
4
"As I have practiced it, photography produces pleasure by simplicity. I see something special and show it to the camera. A picture is produced. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs."
4
"Luckily, many other people tell me how they have had a particular landscape photograph of mine in their office or bedroom for 15 years and it always speaks to them strongly whenever they see it."
4
"Today, I'm very careful not to mention very specific locations when I write or give captions."
4
"Regardless of how you feel inside, always try to look like a winner. Even if you are behind, a sustained look of control and confidence can give you a mental edge that results in victory."
4
"There is nothing like a Bach fugue to remove me from a discordant moment... only Bach hold up fresh and strong after repeated playing. I can always return to Bach when the other records weary me."
4
"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."
4
"The world can only be grasped by action, not by contemplation. The hand is the cutting edge of the mind."
4
"There are no rules and regulations for perfect composition. If there were we would be able to put all the information into a computer and would come out with a masterpiece. We know that's impossible. You have to compose by the seat of your pants."
4
"Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors."
4
"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."
4
"I have always loved reading, so was interested in the literary world, and took many literary portraits."
4
"We moved there a year ago, just as a weekend place. Then we decided to move out of London completely. We will eventually have to work it out a bit more, because you can't have a little boy living with his sisters like that, can you? But we like the idea of closeness."
4
"But I was, and still am, an avid reader and so when I first started I chose to photograph many of the great writers in this country to try and earn a living."
4
"That's my ambition: that you look at the pictures and realize what complex, fascinating, interesting people every single one of my subjects is."
4
"In my photography, color and composition are inseparable. I see in color."
4
"San Francisco is perhaps the most European of all American cities."
4
"Nowadays people's visual imagination is so much more sophisticated, so much more developed, particularly in young people, that now you can make an image which just slightly suggests something, they can make of it what they will."
4
"One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind."
4
"I had been working in colour for ten years or so and looked at digital and liked the possibilities it gave me."
4
"Think about the photo before and after, never during. The secret is to take your time. You mustn't go too fast. The subject must forget about you. Then, however, you must be very quick."
4
"My theory about creativity is that the more money one has, the more creative one can be."
4
"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."
4
"One must ease the public into it - that's an art in itself."
4
"I knew, of course, that trees and plants had roots, stems, bark, branches and foliage that reached up toward the light. But I was coming to realize that the real magician was light itself."
4
"Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be."
4
"After Land I wanted to continue exploring the theme but I needed a new challenge so turned to colour. I explored Bradford and produced a series of urban landscapes that I liked, but because Land had made such an impact on the general public my colour work wasn't reviewed."
4
"When we are angry or depressed in our creativity, we have misplaced our power. We have allowed someone else to determine our worth, and then we are angry at being undervalued."
4
"I dream that someday the step between my mind and my finger will no longer be needed. And that simply by blinking my eyes, I shall make pictures. Then, I think, I shall really have become a photographer."
4
"Born Berlin 1931, Germany, father a British diplomat, mother an American artist. Educated at various schools all over the world. 1958 Settled down to live in London. 1966 Became interested in photography through photographing my young children. No formal training."
4
"Photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth which can make them come back again."
4
"Sometimes I think all my pictures are just pictures of me. My concern is... the human predicament; only what I consider the human predicament may simply be my own."
4
"There are worlds of experience beyond the world of the aggressive man, beyond history, and beyond science. The moods and qualities of nature and the revelations of great art are equally difficult to define; we can grasp them only in the depths of our perceptive spirit."
4
"A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words."
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