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I trust my instincts. I don’t distrust them. They haven’t led me astray. It’s when I’ve made up my mind to be efficient that is when I have gone wrong.

Dorothea Lange

To know ahead of time what you’re looking for means you’re then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting, and often false.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Ahead Along False Know Limit Look Mean Own Photographer Photography Preconception Put
This benefit of seeing…can come only if you pause a while, extricate yourself from the maddening mob of quick impressions ceaselessly battering our lives, and look thoughtfully at a quiet image…the viewer must be willing to pause, to look again, to meditate.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Benefits Come Extricate Impression Look Maddening Mob Pause Quick Quiet
I’ve never not been sure that I was a photographer any more than you would not be sure you were yourself. I was a photographer, or wanting to be a photographer, or beginning – but some phase of photographer I’ve always been.
DOROTHEA LANGE

More never Phases Photographer Sure Yourself
Photography today appears to be in a state of flight… The familiar is made strange, the unfamiliar grotesque. The amateur forces his Sundays into a series of unnatural poses.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Appear Fight Photography State Sunday Today
The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Photographer Photography Unattainable Undertaking Visual
We know by now how to photograph poor people. What we don’t know is how to photograph affluence – whose other face is poverty.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Affiuelence Face People Photograph Poor Poverty Race
To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Enormous Life Live Touch Undertaking Visual
Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion… the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Exhaustion Hate Life Photography Theme
It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Accident Become Lion More Photographer Tamer
I had to get my camera to register things that were more important than how poor they were–their pride, their strength, their spirit.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Camera Important Poor Pride Spirit Strength Thing
The words that come direct from the people are the greatest.If you substitute one out of your own vocabulary, it disappears before your eyes.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Before Disappear Eye Greatest People Vocabulary Word
You go into a room and you know where you’re welcome; you know where you’re unwelcome.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Heart People Tree Unwelcome Welcome
I many times encountered courage, real courage. Undeniable courage. I’ve heard it said that that was the highest quality of the human animal.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Animal Courage Encounter Quality Real
Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Deadening Human Spirit Surefire Thing
A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Documentaries Factual Life Photography
I believe in living with the camera, and not using the camera.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Believe Camera Live Use

I trust my instincts. I don’t distrust them. They haven’t led me astray. It’s when I’ve made up my mind to be efficient that is when I have gone wrong.

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I trust my instincts. I don’t distrust them. They haven’t led me astray. It’s when I’ve made up my mind to be efficient that is when I have gone wrong.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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