Photography Quotes - Page 72

Thus, during the winter of 2003 I ventured into a new arena as a professional photographer.

If you scratch a great photograph, you find two things; a painting and a photograph.

When painting portraits a lot of people say, 'Why not get a photograph of the person?' Photography is wonderful and it is an art form in itself, but... my portrait is a culmination of elements... a truer image of a person than just the 'click' of a snapshot.

Photography can be perceived as the opposite of war.

Is it possible to put an end to a form of human behavior which has existed throughout history by means of photography?

If there is something occurring that is so bad that it could be considered a crime against humanity, it has to be transmitted with anguish, with pain, and create an impact in people - upset them, shake them up, wake them out of their everyday routine.

I used to call myself a war photographer. Now I consider myself as an antiwar photographer.

I think that photography has allowed me to have a voice. I used to stutter, and once I overcame that struggle, it felt good to tell people they were beautiful and special.

At Columbia there's no performing arts department, so I was searching for it everywhere I could, and I took some photography classes and I ended up becoming fascinated with Eastern Religion, and ultimately it seemed to encompass the more abstract mind that I have.

Photography is something you learn to love very quickly. I know that many, many things are going to ask me to have their pictures taken and I will take them all.

I've never been on safari because I've got a phobia of bugs. I just don't want things crawling on me when I'm sleeping. It's a shame given my passion for big cats. But I really enjoy photography, so I'd love to photograph leopards in the wild some day.

In my view, photography and painting really share one history. The influences that work on one, work on the other.

Nudity in photography, whether involving adults or children, is a subject sinking under a freight of political and moral disapproval it could never hope to support, and this is not the place for me to get out the bilge pump. I will only say that critics who tremble so fiercely at the thought of the voyeuristic male gaze miss the point that distance generates mystery and enchantment, and expresses the awe with which the male imagination regards all women.

A beautiful print is a thing in itself, not just a halfway house on the way to the page.

Some objects and events may be photographed, others, if one is to render their true quality, should be painted or set to music, since their essence is more faithfully reproduced through imagination than by the journalistic report.

Painting requires skill. Photography is created by the camera, and one cannot fully control what the camera sees. So people take many photographs because several must always be discarded.

It's pre-photography, a fossilization of time, Americans have done the Zen garden to death. I wanted to do something different.

I didn't want to be criticized for taking low-quality photographs, so I tried to reach the best, highest quality of photography and then to combine this with a conceptual art practice. But thinking back, that was the wrong decision [laughs]. Developing a low-quality aesthetic is a sign of serious fine art-I still see this.

Generally, the French highly promote culture and the arts, and photography is in their blood.

If it is practiced by a man of taste, the photograph will have the appearance of art (but) the photographer must...intervene as little as possible, so as not to lose the objective charm which it naturally possesses.

This recognition, in real life, of a rhythm of surfaces, lines, and values is for me the essence of photography; composition should be a constant of preoccupation, being a simultaneous coalition - an organic coordination of visual elements.

One has to tiptoe lightly and steal up to one's quarry; you don't swish the water when you are fishing.

The intensive use of photographs by mass media lays ever fresh responsibilities upon the photographer. We have to acknowledge the existence of a chasm between the economic needs of our consumer society and the requirements of those who bear witness to this epoch. This affects us all, particularly the younger generations of photographers. We must take greater care than ever not to allow ourselves to be separated from the real world and from humanity.

It seems dangerous to be a portrait artist who does commissions for clients because everyone wants to be flattered, so they pose in such a way that there's nothing left of truth.

...it is seldom indeed that a composition which was poor when the picture was taken can be improved by reshaping it in the dark room.