By Author: U-Z
The contemporary artist . . . is not bound to a fully conceived, previsioned end. His mind is kept alert to in-process discovery and a working rapport is established between the artist and his creation. While it may be true, as Nathan Lyons stated, "The eye and the camera see more than the mind knows," is it not also conceivable that the mind knows more than the eye and the camera can see?
-- Jerry Uelsmann (b. 1934), U.S. photographer.
To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees.
-- Paul Valery (1871-1945) French poet, essayist, aphorist.
Note 4. For these and other reasons the cat is also very hard to photograph. The best photographs are instantaneous, as the mere breathing of a cat will blur the fur in a time exposure.
-- Carl Van Vechten (1880-1964), U.S. author and photographer."The Cat in Art" (Chapter Nine), The Tiger in the House (1922).
My idea of a good picture is one that's in focus and of a famous person.
-- Andy Warhol (1928-1987), U.S. artist, filmmaker, and photographer.
It's not the medium, but the quality of perception and expression, that determines the significance of art.
-- Bill Watterson (b. 1958), U.S. cartoonist (creator of Calvin and Hobbes).
A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.
-- Eudora Welty (1909-2001), U.S. author and photographer.
Children, like animals, use all their senses to discover the world. Then artists come along and discover it the same way all over again.
-- Eudora Welty (1909-2001), U.S. author and photographer.
Photography is 90% sheer, brutal drudgery!
-- Brett Weston (1911-1993), U.S. photographer.
Photography suits the temper of this age -- of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately.
-- Edward Weston (1886-1958), U.S. photographer. The Daybooks of Edward Weston, vol. 3, pt. 3, ch. 10, June 1934 entry, ed. Nancy Newhall.
I see no reason for recording the obvious.
-- Edward Weston (1886-1958), U.S. photographer. The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Daybook II, p. 252.
It seems so utterly naive that landscape -- not that of the pictorial school -- is not considered of "social significance" when it has a far more important bearing on the human race of a given locale than excrescences called cities.
-- Edward Weston (1886-1958), U.S. photographer. The Daybooks of Edward Weston.
I was extravagant in the matter of cameras -- anything photographic -- I had to have the best. But that was to further my work. In most things I have gone along with the plainest -- or without.
-- Edward Weston (1886-1958), U.S. photographer. The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Daybook II, p. 159.
Anything that excites me, for any reason, I will photograph: not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual, nor indulging in extraordinary technique to attract attention.
-- Edward Weston (1886-1958), U.S. photographer. The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Daybook II, p. 155
My way of working -- I start with no preconceived idea . . . discovery excites me to focus -- then rediscovery though the lens -- final form of presentation seen on ground glass, the finished print previsioned complete in every detail of texture, movement, proportion, before exposure -- the shutter's release automatically and finally fixes my conception, allowing no after manipulation -- the ultimate end, the print, is but a duplication of all I saw and felt through the camera.
-- Edward Weston (1886-1958), U.S. photographer. The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Daybook II.
The... arguments against photography ever being considered a fine art are: the element of chance which enters in, finding things ready-made for a machine to record, and of course the mechanics of the medium. . . . I say that chance enters into all branches of art: a chance word or phrase starts a new trend of thought in a writer, a chance sound may bring a new melody to a musician, a chance combination of lines, new composition to a painter. . . . Chance -- which in reality is not chance ? but being ready, attuned to one's surroundings -- and grasp my opportunity.
-- Edward Weston (1886-1958), U.S. photographer. The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Daybook II.
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.
-- Edward Weston (1886-1958), U.S. photographer. The Daybooks of Edward Weston, Daybook II.
I have been photographing our toilet, that glossy enameled receptacle of extraordinary beauty. . . . Here was every sensuous curve of the "human figure divine" but minus the imperfections. Never did the Greeks reach a more significant consummation to their culture, and it somehow reminded me, in the glory of its chaste convulsions and in its swelling, sweeping, forward movement of finely progressing contours, of the Victory of Samothrace.
-- Edward Weston (1886-1958), U.S. photographer. The Daybooks of Edward Weston, vol. 1, pt. 4, ch. 1, entry for October 21, 1925, ed. Nancy Newhall.
The world is full of sloppy bohemians and their work betrays them.
-- Edward Weston (1886-1958), U.S. photographer. The Daybooks of Edward Weston.
We look at a painting to know the painter; it's his company we are after, not his skill.
-- James (Abbott) McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), U.S. artist.
If the man who paints only the tree, or flower, or other surface he sees before him were an artist, the king of artists would be the photographer. It is for the artist to do something beyond this: in portrait painting to put on canvas something more than the face the model wears for that one day; to paint the man, in short, as well as his features.
-- James (Abbott) McNeill Whistler (1834-1903), U.S. artist. "Propositions," in The Gentle Art of Making Enemies (1890).
Of course, it may be that the arts of writing and photography are antithetical. The hope and aim of a word-handler is that he may communicate a thought or an impression to his reader without the reader's realizing that he has been dragged through a series of hazardous or grotesque syntactical situations. In photography the goal seems to be to prove beyond a doubt that the cameraman, in his great moment of creation, was either hanging by his heels from the rafters or was wedged under the floor with his lens in a knothole.
-- E. B. (Elwyn Brooks) White (1899-1985), U.S. author, editor. "Shop Talk," in The Second Tree from the Corner, Harper & Row (1954).
Be still with yourself until the object of your attention affirms your presence.
-- Minor White (1908-1976), U.S. photographer, editor, and curator.
Often while traveling with a camera we arrive just as the sun slips over the horizon of a moment, too late to expose film, only time enough to expose our hearts.
-- Minor White (1908-1976), U.S. photographer, editor, and curator.
No matter how slow the film, Spirit always stands still long enough for the photographer It has chosen.
-- Minor White (1908-1976), U.S. photographer, editor, and curator.
That's what an obit is supposed to be -- a picture, a snapshot. It's not a full-length biography, it's not a portrait. It's a quick picture.
-- Alden Whitman, U.S. journalist, quoted in W, July 18, 1980. Whitman was the obituary writer for the New York Times.
The camera and plate are prepared, the lady must sit for her daguerreotype.
-- Walt Whitman (1819-1892), U.S. poet. Leaves of Grass, line 295. 1900
Edward and I both agreed with the view of a Greek friend of ours, Jean Varda, who was fond of saying there were three perfect shapes in the world . . . the hull of a boat, a violin and a woman's body.
-- Charis Wilson (b. 1915), U.S. model and author, in Edward Weston Nudes.
I photograph to find out what something will look like photographed.
-- Garry Winogrand (1928-84), U.S. photographer.
The photo is a thing in itself. And that's what still photography is all about.
-- Garry Winogrand (1928-84), U.S. photographer.
We regard the photograph, the picture on our wall, as the object itself (the man, landscape, and so on) depicted there. This need not have been so. We could easily imagine people who did not have this relation to such pictures. Who, for example, would be repelled by photographs, because a face without color and even perhaps a face in reduced proportions struck them as inhuman.
-- Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), Austrian philosopher. Philosophical Investigations, pt. 2, sct. 11 (1953).
There's more to the picture/than meets the eye . . .
-- Neil Young, Candian-born U.S. musician and composer, "Hey, Hey, My, My (Out of the Blue, Into the Black)."
In my view you cannot claim to have seen something until you have photographed it.
-- Emile Zola (1840-1902), French journalist, critic, and novelist.
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