quotations about photography
Photography bears witness to the passage of time, but it cannot make statements as to the importance of things at any time, nor is it concerned with "truth and beauty" or with teasing out what underlies appearance. Rather, it voraciously records anything in view.
LIZ WELLS
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Photography: A Critical Introduction
Composition in photography is almost as varied as composition in music or words -- melodic or atonal, safe or daring -- and can enhance subject, theme, and style. Every photograph you take involves you in some compositional decision, even if this is simply where to set up the camera or when to press the button.
MICHAEL LANGFORD
Basic Photography
A photograph is a biography of a moment.
ART SHAY
interview, CBS News, February 13, 2014
The definition of a picture and the definition of photography is evolving in this truly digital space. Pictures can do things that pictures were never supposed to do.
RUSSELL ARMAND
"How the GIF Is Taking Over the World", Time, March 30, 2016
The definition of photography is changing, too, and becoming more of a language. We're attaching imagery to tweets or text messages, almost like a period at the end of a sentence. It's enhancing our communication in a whole new way.
JOSHUA ALLEN HARRIS
"In the Future, We Will Photograph Everything and Look at Nothing", The New Yorker, April 4, 2016
One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind. To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.
DOROTHEA LANGE
Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life
Photography knows how to authenticate its misrepresentations.
MASON COOLEY
City Aphorisms
The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion.
RICHARD AVEDON
attributed, Unmarked: The Politics of Performance
After all, the decisive quality in a photographer is the faculty of seeing certain things and being tempted by them.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
"George Bernard Shaw on Coburn's Photography", British Journal of Photography, 1906
Photography is a powerful medium of persuasion and propaganda. It has that ring of truth when all the time, in artful hands, it can make any statement the manipulator chooses.
MICHAEL LANGFORD
Basic Photography
Taking pictures is savoring life intensely, every hundredth of a second.
MARC RIBOUD
FotoFest 90: The International Month of Photography: February 10-March 10
The camera is a perfect companion. It makes no demands, imposes no obligations. It becomes your notebook and your reference library, your microscope and your telescope. It sees what you are too lazy or too careless to notice, and it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.
AARON SISKIND
attributed, The Amateur Photographer's Handbook
There is nothing worse than a sharp image of a fuzzy concept.
ANSEL ADAMS
attributed, Light and Lens: Photography in the Digital Age
You put your camera around your neck in the morning, along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you.
DOROTHEA LANGE
Dorothea Lange: A Photographer's Life
I love things like Instagram and Pinterest. I get so many ideas just by getting a daily digest of images from great photographers who I follow on social media. What that also does is it tells me which pictures stand out to me, then I can analyse them and try and work out what it is about that particular image that had me mesmerised for longer than a glance.
GUY SEBASTIAN
"Guy Sebastian shares his photography tips", Sunshine Coast Daily, April 26, 2016
It is in these moments of stillness where I can really appreciate the little hidden surprises at every turn, the small details that often go unnoticed as we hurtle through our days. When you stop, take a deep breath, and find your sense of wonder, you surprise yourself with the beauty that lies in your frame.
GUY SEBASTIAN
"Guy Sebastian shares his photography tips", Sunshine Coast Daily, April 26, 2016
Life for a photographer cannot be a matter of indifference and it is important to see what is invisible to others.
ROBERT FRANK
attributed, Photographic Possibilities
My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, or the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.
EDWARD WESTON
attributed, Pictures on a Page: Photojournalism and Picture Editing
Photography is an art of observation. It has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.
ELLIOTT ERWITT
attributed, "100 inspirational photography quotes", Shootzilla
Photography, if practiced with high seriousness, is a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. The contest can be held anywhere.
JOHN SZARKOWSKI
Looking at photographs: 100 pictures from the collection of the Museum of Modern Art