By Author: Q-T
I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive. I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence.
-- Man Ray (1890-1976), U.S. photographer. repr. In Man Ray: Photographer, ed. Philippe Sers (1981). Interview in CamŽra (Paris).
One of the satisfactions of a genius is his will-power and obstinacy.
-- Man Ray (1890-1976), U.S. photographer. Letter, May 18, 1941, to his sister. Quoted in Neil Baldwin, Man Ray (1988).
Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask 'how', while others of a more curious nature will ask 'why'. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.
-- Man Ray (1890-1976), U.S. photographer.
It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them.
-- Man Ray (1890-1976), U.S. photographer. Quoted in Neil Baldwin, Man Ray, introduction, Julien Levy exhibition catalog, April 1945 (1988).
To me, a painter, if not the most useful, is the least harmful member of our society.
-- Man Ray (1890-1976), U.S. photographer. Self Portrait, ch. 6 (1963).
An original is a creation
motivated by desire.
Any reproduction of an original
is motivated by necessity ...
It is marvelous that we are
the only species that creates
gratuitous forms.
To create is divine, to reproduce
is human.
-- Man Ray (1890-1976), U.S. photographer. repr. In Neil Baldwin, Man Ray, ch. 24 (1988). "Originals Graphic Multiples," published in Objets de Mon Affection (1983).
No one lives in this room
without confronting the whiteness of the wall
behind the poems, planks of books,
photographs of dead heroines.
Without contemplating last and late
the true nature of poetry. The drive
to connect. The dream of a common language.
-- Adrienne Rich (b. 1929), U.S. poet. "Origins and History of Consciousness," The Dream of a Common Language (1978).
In [family snapshots] the flow of profane time has been stopped and a sacred interval of self-conscious revelation has been cut from it by the edge of the picture frame and the light of the sun or the flash.
-- Adrienne Rich (b. 1929), U.S. poet. "Snapshots of a Daughter-in-Law" (l. 26), in The Norton Anthology of Poetry, Alexander W. Allison and others, eds. (3d ed., 1983), W. W. Norton & Company.
In order to educate man to a new longing, everyday familiar objects must be shown to him with totally unexpected perspectives and in unexpected situations. New objects should be depicted from different sides in order to provide a complete impression of the object.
-- Alexander Rodchenko (1891-1956), Russian Constructivist painter and photographer.
One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that one's work is terribly important.
-- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), British philosopher and activist.
In photography there are no shadows that cannot be illuminated.
-- August Sander (1876-1964), German photographer.
[P]ainting is something you do. You make a painting. You don't make a photograph. You see a photograph. Photography is seeing only, you see it, you release the shutter, you use your aperture, your machine and once you've seen it, that's it. It's done.
-- Jurgen Schadeberg (b. 1931), German-born South African film-maker and photographer
That the outer man is a picture of the inner, and the face an expression and revelation of the whole character, is a presumption likely enough in itself, and therefore a safe one to go on; borne out as it is by the fact that people are always anxious to see anyone who has made himself famous. . . . Photography . . . offers the most complete satisfaction of our curiosity.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), German philosopher. Parerga and Paralipomena, vol. 2, ch. 29, sct. 377 (1851).
He [the photographer] does not create his object in reality as does the painter, but he creates, before the camera begins to function, the irrevocably ultimate aesthetic form. He carries the notion of the shape of an object in himself and he takes the object destined for that form, giving it a certain position or moving it into a certain situation of light, in a certain relation to space. . . . The photographer's artistic performance is thus displayed in pre-photographic and in post-photographic action; in the preparation for real photographic action and in the reproduction of the photograph. The painter recreates his object from beginning to end . . . through his activity, through his painting. The photographer, it is true, changes his object, too, by his photographic action . . . he gives the convincing shape, most clearly adequate to his perception, before, and he fixes this shape in a mechanistic way. . . . Whereas the painter remains creative from first to last, the creative activity of the photographer is confined and limited; whereas the artistic action of the painter is not interrupted, the artistic action of the photographer breaks off in the moment in which the apparatus is to fix and make visible its effect.
-- Heinrich Schwarz (1894-1974), Czech-born U.S. art historian. "On Photography, Part II," in Art and Photography: Forerunners and Influences (University of Chicago Press, 1985).
Dear friend,
I will have to sink with hundreds of others
on a dumbwaiter into hell.
I will be a light thing.
I will enter death
like someone's lost optical lens.
-- Anne Sexton (1928-1974), U.S. poet. "Suicide Note."
Sunday at noon through hyaline thin air
Sees down the street,
And in the camera of my eye depicts
Row-houses and row-lives:
Glass after glass, door after door the same, . . .
-- Karl Shapiro (b. 1913), U.S. poet, critic. "The Dome of Sunday" (l. 4-8), in New & Selected Poems, 1940-1986 (University of Chicago Press, 1987).
The camera can represent flesh so superbly that, if I dared, I would never photograph a figure without asking that figure to take its clothes off.
-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic. repr. In Bernard Shaw on Photography (1989). "Some Criticisms of the Exhibitions," Amateur Photographer (London, October 16, 1902).
I've posed nude for a photographer in the manner of Rodin's Thinker, but I merely looked constipated.
-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic.
The photographer is like the cod which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.
-- George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Anglo-Irish playwright, critic, introduction to a catalogue for A. L. Coburn's exhibition.
The still must tease with the promise of a story the viewer of it itches to be told.
-- Cindy Sherman (b. 1954), U.S. photographer.
Portraits are the most intimate photographs. The image will survive the subject.
-- (Victor) Skrebneski, U.S. photographer.
To do a portrait today, I decide how close I can get to my subject. First, of course, mentally or intellectually, then in the viewfinder. Music cues the subject and me when to shoot. The music played during a photography session is most important -- stimulating to the subject and to me. As in a film, the music builds or becomes quiet, romantic; just one note sets the actor up to emote for his audience. I want a reciprocal portrait, not a bureaucratic one.
-- (Victor) Skrebneski (b. 1929), U.S. photographer.
Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness.
-- W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978), U.S. photojournalist.
I've never made any picture, good or bad, without paying for it in emotional turmoil.
-- W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978), U.S. photojournalist.
[O]ne of art photography's most vigorous enterprises -- [is] concentrating on victims, on the unfortunate -- but without the compassionate purpose that such a project is expected to serve.
-- Susan Sontag (b. 1933), U.S. author. On Photography, ch. 2 (1977).
As photographs give people an imaginary possession of a past that is unreal, they also help people to take possession of space in which they are insecure.
-- Susan Sontag (b. 1933), U.S. author. On Photography, ch. 1 (1977).
. . . [photographs] trade simultaneously on the prestige of art and the magic of the real.
-- Susan Sontag (b. 1933), U.S. author. On Photography, ch. 3 (1977).
A way of certifying experience, taking photographs is also a way of refusing it -- by limiting experience to a search for the photogenic, by converting experience into an image, a souvenir. Travel becomes a strategy for accumulating photographs.
-- Susan Sontag (b. 1933), U.S. author. On Photography, ch. 1 (1977).
So successful has been the camera's role in beautifying the world that photographs, rather than the world, have become the standard of the beautiful.
-- Susan Sontag (b. 1933), U.S. author. On Photography, ch. 4 (1977).
The photographer both loots and preserves, denounces and consecrates.
-- Susan Sontag (b. 1933), U.S. essayist. On Photography, "Melancholy Objects," (1977).
When I lie, I am closer to the truth than documentary photography.
-- Tono Stano (b. 1960), Czech photographer.
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 . . .
-- Edward Steichen (1879-1973), U.S. photographer and curator.
Every other artist begins [with] a blank canvas, a piece of paper -- the photographer begins with the finished product.
-- Edward Steichen (1879-1973), U.S. photographer and curator, recalled on his death 25 Mar 73
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.
-- Edward Steichen (1879-1973), U.S. photographer and curator, Time, April 7, 61.
In what camera do you taste
Poison, in what darkness set
Glittering scales and point
The tipping tongue?
-- Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "The Bagatelles the Madrigals."
Most modern reproducers of life, even including the camera, really repudiate it. We gulp down evil, choke at good.
-- Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), U.S. poet. "Adagia," in Opus Posthumous (1959).
The difficulty of literature is not to write, but to write what you mean; not to affect your reader, but to affect him precisely as you wish.
-- Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894), British author, Virginibus Puerisque (1881).
The ability to make a truly artistic photograph is not acquired off-hand, but is the result of an artistic instinct coupled with years of labor.
-- Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), U.S. photographer and curator.
There are many schools of painting. Why should there not be many schools of photographic art? There is hardly a right and a wrong in these matters, but there is truth, and that should form the basis of all works of art.
-- Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), U.S. photographer and curator, American Amateur Photographer, 1893.
I detest tradition for tradition's sake; the half-alive; that which is not real. I feel no hatred of individuals, but of customs, traditions; superstitions that go against life, against truth, against the reality of experience, against the spontaneous living out of the sense of wonder-of fresh experience, freshly seen and communicated.
-- Alfred Stieglitz (1864-1946), U.S. photographer and curator, quoted by Dorothy Norman, Aperture, Vol. 8, No. 1, 1960, p. 25.
Photographs are the most reliable, the most correct recording means, and therefore they become the most important aid in educating and obtaining instruction.
-- Sir Benjamin Stone (1838-1914), British photographer.
It is one thing to photograph people. It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their humanness.
-- Paul Strand (1890-1976), U.S. photographer and film-maker.
Whether a watercolor is inferior to an oil [painting], or whether a drawing, an etching, or a photograph is not as important as either, is inconsequent. To have to despise something in order to respect something else is a sign of impotence.
-- Paul Strand (1890-1976), U.S. photographer and film-maker, Camera Work, 1917.
Wherever I happened to be, in the Southwest, in Mexico, in an Italian village, in Ghana or Egypt, in Morocco or on the islands of the Outer Hebrides, I sought the signs of a long partnership that give each place its special quality and create the profiles of its people. . . .
So finally, it can be seen that what I have explored all my life is the world on my doorstep. And if the things that come close to me today are those literally only a few feet away in our garden at Orgeval, this too is another phase of the voyage.
When it is no longer possible to get about with the same energy and freedom, a man usually tries to find a way around the difficulty so that he can continue to do the things he wants to do. The question he asks is: What can the obstacle lead to that is new, positive and useful? In my case, the answer has been an intensified awareness of what has always been there to see in my immediate surroundings.
The material of the artist lies not within himself nor in the fabrications of his imagination, but in the world around him. The element which gives life to the great Picassos and Cezannes, to the paintings of van Gogh, is the relationship of the artist to content, to the truth of the real world. It is the way he sees this world and translates it into art that determines whether the work of art becomes a new and active force within reality, to widen and transform man's experience.
The artist's world is limitless. It can be found anywhere far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep."
-- Paul Strand (1890-1976), U.S. photographer and film-maker, from the Introduction to the "On My Doorstep" portfolio, Orgeval, France, December 1975.
The vanquished themselves prove that history has not lied; like tourists in hell, they took snapshots.
-- Theodore Strauss, U.S. screenwriter, on photographs of Nazi concentration camps, ABC TV, March 6, 1968.
The eyes are not responsible when the mind does the seeing.
-- Publilius Syrus (c. 1st century BC), Syrian-born Roman mimographer.
The invention of photography provided a radically new picture-making process -- a process based not on synthesis but on selection. The difference was a basic one. Paintings were made -- constructed from a storehouse of traditional schemes and skills and attitudes -- but photographs, as the man on the street put, were taken.
-- John Szarkowski (b. 1925), U.S. photographer, curator. The Photographer's Eye, introduction, Museum of Modern Art (1966).
The photograph is married to the eye,
Grafts on its bride one-sided skins of truth . . .
-- Dylan Thomas (1914-1953), Welsh poet, from "Our eunuch dreams."
Gonzo journalism . . . is a style of "reporting" based on William Faulkner's idea that the best fiction is far more true than any kind of journalism -- and the best journalists have always known this. . . . True gonzo reporting needs the talents of a master journalist, the eye of an artist/photographer and the heavy balls of an actor. Because the writer must be a participant in the scene, while he's writing it -- or at least taping it, or even sketching it. Or all three. Probably the closest analogy to the ideal would be a film director/producer who writes his own scripts, does his own camera work and somehow manages to film himself in action, as the protagonist or at least a main character.
-- Hunter S. Thompson (b. 1939), U.S. journalist. "Jacket Copy for Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," in The Great Shark Hunt (1979).
Magazine photography is the mural painting of modern times.
-- Gene Thornton, U.S. photography and art critic, NY Times, July 15, 1979.
What most artists using photography feel that they need to do is to show that they are serious, that they are not taking snapshots. To point a camera at something does not qualify you as an artist because everybody has done that.
-- Wolfgang Tillmans (b. 1968), German photographer.
For any man with half an eye,
What stands before him may espy;
But optics sharp it needs I ween,
To see what is not to be seen.
-- John Trumbull (1750-1831), U.S. lawyer and poet (known as "The Poet of the American Revolution"); from his satire, McFingal (1782), canto I, l. 67.
Be virtuous and you will be eccentric.
-- Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835-1910), U.S. author. "Mental Photographs," motto (1869), repr. In Complete Humourous Sketches and Tales, ed. Charles Neider (1961).
A photograph is a most important document, and there is nothing more damning to go down to posterity than a silly, foolish smile caught and fixed forever.
-- Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835-1910), U.S. author.
Part of the portrait painter's art, we must be careful to note, is to produce a sort of synthesis, something more various, richer, than even an astute photographer (now or yesterday) can catch by snapping a shutter in a camera. The portrait painter must be skilled in human observation, he must actually be moved by his subject as well as by his profession. True, an ambitious photographer might spend as much clock time as a painter in "studying" his subject, looking for the right shade of mood and the right chiaroscuro to articulate it. Yet this method, the photographic one, must necessarily rely too much on the subject's timed cooperation, since, materially speaking, all the photographer can record is a single moment, no matter how tactically approached and psychologically prepared that moment be.
-- Parker Tyler, U.S. film critic, poet. The Shadow of an Airplane Climbs the Empire State Building: A World Theory of Film, ch. 2 (Doubleday, 1972).
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