By Author: G-I
But the body fails us and the mirror knows, and we no longer insist that the gray hush be carried off its surface by the cloth, for we have run to fat, and wrinkles encircle the eyes and notch the neck where the skin wattles, and the flesh of the arms hangs loose like an overlarge sleeve, veins thicken like ropes and empurple the body as though they had been drawn there by a pen, freckles darken, liver spots appear, the hair . . . ah, the hair is exhausted and gray and lusterless, in weary rolls like cornered lint.
-- William Gass (b. 1924), U.S. fiction writer, essayist, philosopher. "Three Photos of Colette," p. 139, The World Within the Word. Review of The Complete Claudine, by Colette, in The New York Review of Books (Apr. 14, 1977).
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 (b. 1948), U.S. science fiction (cyberpunk) writer. Mona Lisa Overdrive, ch. 19, Bantam Spectra (1988).
I'd been in Burbank for three days, trying to suffuse a really dull-looking rocker with charisma. . . . It is possible to photograph what isn't there; it's damned hard to do, and consequently a very marketable talent.
-- William Gibson (b. 1948), U.S. science fiction (cyberpunk) writer. repr. Burning Chrome, Ace Books (1987). "The Gernsback Continuum," Universe 11, ed. Terry Carr (1981).
I am willing to drive many miles, expose a lot of film, wait untold hours, camp out to be somewhere at sunrise, make many return trips to get what I am after.
-- Laura Gilpin (1891-1979), U.S. photographer.
A river seems a magic thing. A magic, moving, living part of the very earth itself -- for it is from the soil, both from its depth and from its surface, that a river has its beginning.
-- Laura Gilpin (1891-1979), U.S. photographer. The Rio Grande, "Introduction" (1949).
Design is the fundamental of everything.
-- Laura Gilpin (1891-1979), U.S. photographer.
Young man, if God had wanted you to see me that way, he would have put your eyes in your bellybutton.
-- Lillian Gish (1893-1993), U.S. movie actress, on a low camera angle, quoted by Richard Thomas on American Film Institute's "Salute to Lillian Gish," CBS TV, 17 Apr 84.
And God said: Let there be light: and there was light.
-- God, the Bible, Genesis (ch. I, v. 3).
Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second.
-- Jean-Luc Godard (b. 1930), French filmmaker, author. From " Le Petit Soldat" (film) (direction and screenplay, 1960). The Columbia World of Quotations, 1996.
More light! [German: Mehr Licht!]
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German author and philosopher; said to be his last words.
Objects in pictures should so be arranged as by their very position to tell their own story.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832), German author and philosopher.
The photographic enthusiast likes to lure us into a darkened room in order to display his slides on a silver screen. Aided by the adaptability of the eye and by the borrowed light from the intense projector bulb, he can achieve those relationships in brightness that will make us dutifully admire the wonderful autumn tints he photographed on his latest trip. As soon as we look at a print of these photographs by day, the light seems to go out of them. It is one of the miracles of art that the same does not happen there. The paintings in our galleries are seen one day in bright sunshine and another day in the dim light of a rainy afternoon, yet they remain the same paintings, ever faithful, ever convincing. To a marvelous extent they carry their own light within. For their truth is not that of a perfect replica, it is the truth of art.
-- E. H. Gombrich (b. 1909), Austrian-born British art critic, historian. Art and Illusion, ch. 1, Pantheon (1956).
Language is filled
with words for deprivation
images so familiar
it is hard to crack language open
into that other country
the country of being.
-- Susan Griffin (b. 1943), U.S. author and feminist. "Hunger," lines 42-47 (1986). This poem's epigraph reads: "after photographs of refugees from famine in the Sahel, taken by Sebastia› Selgado, exhibited in Paris, May, 1986."
The function of the photographer is to help people understand the world around them.
-- Sid Grossman (1913-1955), U.S. photographer.
Several years ago, in the flap of a portfolio, I came upon an x-ray of the left side of my torso, taken April 20, 1972, when I was seventeen. I stuck it onto the glass of the French window opposite my desk. The light passed through the bluish network of bony lines and blurry organs as through a piece of stained glass . . . I was displaying the most intimate image of myself.
-- HervŽ Guibert (1955-1990), French fiction writer, journalist, and critic, Ghost Image, tr. Robert Bononno. Los Angeles, CA: Sun & Moon Press, 1996.
All I wanted was to connect my moods with those of Paris. Beauty pains and when it pained most, I shot.
-- Ernst Haas (1921-1986), Austrian-born U.S. photographer.
There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.
-- Ernst Haas (1921-1986), Austrian-born U.S. photographer.
I am not interested in shooting new things--I am interested to see things new.
-- Ernst Haas (1921-1986), Austrian-born U.S. photographer.
With photography a new language has been created. Now for the first time it is possible to express reality by reality. We can look at an impression as long as we wish, we can delve into it and, so to speak, renew past experiences at will.
-- Ernst Haas (1921-1986), Austrian-born U.S. photographer.
A picture is the expression of an impression. If the beautiful were not in us, how would we ever recognize it?
-- Ernst Haas (1921-1986), Austrian-born U.S. photographer.
Of the thousands of people, celebrated and unknown, who have sat before my camera, I am often asked who was the most difficult subject, or the easiest, or which picture is my favorite. This last question is like asking a mother which child she likes the most.
-- Philippe Halsman (1906-1979), Latvian-born U.S. photographer, recalled on his death, June 25, 1979.
So now almost everyone owns a camera. Yet, of all the commonplace tools available to us, the SLR camera is probably the least understood and certainly the most under-exploited. All too frequently the average amateur will purchase a fine modern camera and proceed to use it for making the most elementary simple snapshots. This surely is like playing "Chopsticks" on a concert grand piano.
-- Sam Haskins (b. 1926), South Africa-born British photographer.
Either we have hope within us or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation. Hope is not prognostication. It is an orientation of the spirit, an orientation of the heart. . . .
Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously headed for early success, but rather, an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed. . . .
Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out. . . . It is also this hope, above all, which gives us the strength to live and continually try new things, even in conditions that seem as hopeless as ours do, here and now.
-- Vaclav Havel (b. 1936), playwright, saxophonist, and former President of the Czech Republic, from Disturbing the Peace.
We've become a race of Peeping Toms. What people oughta do is get outside their own house and look in for a change.
-- John Michael Hayes (b. 1919), U.S. screenwriter, and Alfred Hitchcock, screenplay for Rear Window (1954). Stella (Thelma Ritter) to invalid photographer L.B. Jeffries (James Stewart), who is spying on his neighbors across the courtyard of his apartment building.
Another instance of a flight from feeling surfaces in the tone of much professional criticism of films, plays, books, or music. Too often it seems to be a habit among such writers to appear to be above what they are considering -- as if letting themselves become involved in the work from within would somehow deprive them of the objectivity needed to criticize. They resist letting themselves become touched emotionally. Such a fear of feeling does a basic injustice to the work being considered because it prevents it from being experienced. The result is that the critic focuses on technique and tangential matters that are more manageable. Such critics suffer from spiritual anemia; they do not possess what every genuine critic must have -- largeness of soul.
-- Samuel (John) Hazo, (b. 1928), U.S. author and translator, former Poet Laureate of Pennsylvania, "Fear of Feeling," Poets & Writers Magazine, July/August 1996.
Many pictures turn out to be limp translations of the known world instead of vital objects which create an intrinsic world of their own. There is a vast difference between taking a picture and making a photograph.
-- Robert Heinecken (b. 1931), U.S. photographer.
The eyes have one language every where.
-- George Herbert (1593-1633), British poet, "Jacula Prudentum."
The ear is a less trustworthy witness than the eye.
-- Herodotus (ca. 490 BCE-late 420s BCE), Greek historian.
We credit most our sight; one eye doth please
Our trust farre more than ten eare-witnesses.
-- Robert Herrick (1591-1674), British Cavalier poet, "Hesperides -- The Eyes Before the Ears."
The spider dances her web without knowing that there are flies who will get caught in it. The fly, dancing nonchalantly on a sunbeam, gets caught in the net without knowing what lies in store. But through both of them "It" dances, and inside and outside are united in this dance. So, too, the archer hits the target without having aimed.
-- Eugen Herrigel (1884-1955) German professor of philosophy, Zen in the Art of Archery (1948), p. 65.
I learned to lose myself so effortlessly in the breathing that I sometimes had the feeling that I myself was not breathing but -- strange as this may sound -- being breathed.
-- Eugen Herrigel (1884-1955) German professor of philosophy, Zen in the Art of Archery (1948), p. 25.
"You must learn to wait properly."
"And how does one learn that?"
"By letting go of yourself, leaving yourself and everything yours behind so decisively that nothing more is left of you but a purposeless tension ."
-- Eugen Herrigel (1884-1955) German professor of philosophy, Zen in the Art of Archery (1948), p. 35.
If everything depends on the archer's becoming purposeless and effacing himself in the event, then its outward realization must occur automatically, in no further need of the controlling or reflecting intelligence
-- Eugen Herrigel (1884-1955) German professor of philosophy, Zen in the Art of Archery (1948).
Far from wishing to awaken the artist in the pupil prematurely, the teacher considers it his first task to make him a skilled artisan with sovereign control of his craft. The pupil follows out his intention with untiring industry. As though he had no higher aspirations he bows under his burden with a kind of obtuse devotion, only to discover in the course of years that forms which he perfectly masters no longer oppress but liberate. He grows daily more capable of following any inspiration without technical effort, and also of letting inspiration come to him through meticulous observation
-- Eugen Herrigel (1884-1955) German professor of philosophy, Zen in the Art of Archery (1948).
This state, in which nothing definite is thought, planned, striven for, desired or expected, which aims in no particular direction and yet knows itself capable alike of the possible and the impossible, so unswerving is its power -- this state, which is at bottom purposeless and egoless, was called by the Masters truly "spiritual." It is in fact charged with spiritual awareness and is there also called "right presence of mind." This means that the mind or spirit is present anywhere, because it is nowhere attached to any particular place. And it can remain present because, even when related to this or that object, it does not cling to it by reflection and thus lose its original mobility. Like water filling a pond, which is always ready to flow off again, it can work its inexhaustible power because it is free, and be open to everything because it is empty. This state is essentially a primordial state, and its symbol, the empty circle, is not empty of meaning for him who stands within it.
-- Eugen Herrigel (1884-1955) German professor of philosophy, Zen in the Art of Archery (1948), p. 41..
Out of the fullness of this presence of mind, disturbed by no ulterior motive, the artist who is released from all attachment must practice his art. But if he is to fit himself self-effacingly into the creative process, the practice of the art must have the way smoothed for it. For if, in his self-immersion, he saw himself faced with a situation into which he could not leap instinctively, he would first have to bring it to consciousness. He would then enter again into all the relationships from which he had detached himself; he would be like one weakened, who considers his program for the day, but not like an Awakened One who lives and works in the primordial state. It would never appear to him as if the individual parts of the creative process were being played into his hands by a higher power; he would never experience how intoxicatingly the vibrancy of an event is communicated to him who is himself only a vibration, and how everything that he does is done before he knows it.
-- Eugen Herrigel (1884-1955) German professor of philosophy, Zen in the Art of Archery (1948).
Assuming that his talent can survive the increasing strain, there is one scarcely avoidable danger that lies ahead of the pupil on his road to mastery. Not the danger of wasting himself in idle self-gratification -- for the East has no aptitude for this cult of the ego -- but rather of getting stuck in his achievement, which is confirmed by his success and magnified by his renown: in other words, of behaving as if the artistic existence were a form of life that bore witness to its own validity.
The teacher foresees this danger. Carefully and with the adroitness of a psychopomp he seeks to head the pupil off in time and to detach him from himself. This he does by pointing out, casually and as though it were scarcely worth a mention in view of all that the pupil has already learned, that all right doing is accomplished only in a state of true selflessness, in which the doer cannot be present any longer as "himself". Only the spirit is present, a kind of awareness which shows no trace of egohood and for that reason ranges without limit through all distances and depths, with "eyes that hear and with ears that see."
-- Eugen Herrigel (1884-1955) German professor of philosophy, Zen in the Art of Archery (1948).
When I asked the Master how we could get on without him on our return to Europe, he said: "Your question is already answered by the fact that I made you take a test. You have now reached a stage where teacher and pupil are no longer two persons, but one. You can separate from me any time you wish. Even if broad seas lie between us, I shall always be with you when you practice what you have learned. I need not ask you to keep up your regular practicing, not to discontinue it on any pretext whatsoever, and to let no day go by without your performing the ceremony, even without bow and arrow, or at least without having breathed properly. I need not ask you because I know that you can never give up this spiritual archery. Do not ever write to me about it, but send me photographs from time to time so that I can see how you draw the bow. Then I shall know everything I need to know." -- Eugen Herrigel (1884-1955) German professor of philosophy, Zen in the Art of Archery (1948).
If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn't need to lug a camera.
-- Lewis Wickes Hine (1874-1940), U.S. photographer.
I wanted to show the things that had to be appreciated. I wanted to show the things that had to be corrected.
-- Lewis Wickes Hine (1874-1940), U.S. photographer.
While photographs may not lie, liars may photograph.
-- Lewis Wickes Hine (1874-1940), U.S. photographer.
If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He's not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he's really needed.
-- David Hockney (b. 1937), British artist. "New York: September 1986," Hockney On Photography, ed. Wendy Brown (1988).
Television is becoming a collage -- there are so many channels that you move through them making a collage yourself. In that sense, everyone sees something a bit different.
-- David Hockney (b. 1937), British artist. "New York: November 1985," Hockney On Photography, ed. Wendy Brown (1988).
I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording, not thinking. Recording the man shaving at the window opposite and the woman in the kimono washing her hair. Some day, all this will have to be developed, carefully printed and fixed.
-- Christopher Isherwood (1904-1986), British-born U.S. author and dramatist, "Goodbye to Berlin," 1939, in The Berline Stories. This book was the basis for the successful Broadway play and subsequent Hollywood film I Am a Camera, on which the musical and movie Cabaret are based.
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