Photography is a lot like telling a large predatory cat what to do-while an audience of people you can’t see watches you.
DOROTHEA LANGEThe camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
More Dorothea Lange Quotes
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That frame of mind that you need to make fine pictures of a very wonderful subject, you cannot do it by not being lost yourself.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
The people who are garrulous and wear their heart on their sleeve and tell you everything, that’s one kind of person, but the fellow who’s hiding behind a tree and hoping you don’t see him is the fellow that you’d better find out why.
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I realize more and more what it takes to be a really good photographer. You go in over your head, not just up to your neck.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
Artists are controlled by the life that beats in them, like the ocean beats on the shore.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
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 -
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 -
The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects.
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It is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
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 -
The best way to go into an unknown territory is to go in ignorant, ignorant as possible, with your mind wide open, as wide open as possible and not having to meet anyone else’s requirement but your own.
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 -
You go into a room and you know where you’re welcome; you know where you’re unwelcome.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
go in over your head, not just up to your neck.
DOROTHEA LANGE






