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Walker Evans Quotes about Art

All Walker Evans Quotes Art quotes Photography Quality Reality Style
Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.

Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.

Walker Evans
Photography, Art, Eye

Leaving aside the mysteries and the inequities of human talent, brains, taste, and reputations, the matter of art in photography may come down to this: it is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing; it is the defining of observation full and felt.

Walker Evans
Photography, Art, Leaving

You see, a document has use, whereas art is really useless. Therefore art is never a document, although it can adopt that style.

Walker Evans
Art, Style, Use

Documentary: That’s a sophisticated and misleading word. And not really clear… The term should be documentary style… You see, a document has use, whereas art is really useless.

Walker Evans
Photography, Art, Style

I say half jokingly that photography is the most difficult of the arts. It does require a certain arrogance to see and to choose. I feel myself walking on a tightrope instead of on the ground.

Walker Evans
Photography, Art, Arrogance

I began to wonder - I knew I was an artist or wanted to be one - but I was wondering whether I really was an artist. I was doing such ordinary things that I could feel the difference. Most people would look at those things and say, 'Well, that's nothing. What did you do that for? That's just a wreck of a car or a wreck of a man. That's nothing. That isn't art.' They don't say that anymore.

Walker Evans
Art, Men, Differences

When you say documentary, you have to have a sophisticated ear to receive that word. It should be documentary style, because documentary is police photography of a scene and a murder ... that's a real document. You see, art is really useless, and a document has use. And therefore, art is never a document, but it can adopt that style. I do it. I'm called a documentary photographer. But that presupposes a quite subtle knowledge of this distinction.

Walker Evans
Photography, Art, Real
Jeff Rosenheim, Walker Evans, Jane Ninas, Historic New Orleans Collection (1991). “Walker Evans and Jane Ninas in New Orleans, 1935-1936”, Historic New Orleans

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