Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself.
BERENICE ABBOTTThe art is in selecting what is worthwhile to take the trouble about.
More Berenice Abbott Quotes
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Actually, documentary pictures include every subject in the world – good, bad, indifferent. I have yet to see a fine photograph which is not a good document.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
I have yet to see a fine photograph which is not a good document.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
Does not the very word ‘creative’ mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act – rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life – not death.
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Let us first say what photography is not. A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. It is not just a pretty picture, not an exercise in contortionist techniques and sheer print quality.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
I didn’t decide to be a photographer; I just happened to fall into it.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
I agree that all good photographs are documents, but I also know that all documents are certainly not good photographs.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
I believe there is no more creative medium than photography to recreate the living world of our time. Photography gladly accepts the challenge because it is at home in its element: namely, realism – real life – the now.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
Self-conscious artiness is fatal, but it certainly would not hurt to study composition in general. Having a basic understanding of composition would help construct a better organized image.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.
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The photograph may be presented as finely and artistically as you will; but to merit serious consideration, must be directly connected with the world we live in.
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I think the important decision for a photographer is to choose a subject that intensely interests him or her.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
I’m not a nice girl. I’m a photographer.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
Imagine a world without photography, one could only imagine.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
It is or should be a significant document, a penetrating statement, which can be described in a very simple term-selectivity.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
If a medium is representational by nature of the realistic image formed by a lens, I see no reason why we should stand on our heads to distort that function. On the contrary, we should take hold of that very quality, make use of it, and explore it to the fullest.
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The lens freezes time and space in what may be an optical slavery or, contrarily, the crystallization of meaning. The limits of the lens’ vision are esthetically often a virtue.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
Photography is not only drawing with light, though light is the indispensable agent of its being. It is modeling or sculpturing with light, to reproduce the plastic form of natural objects. It is painting with light.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
What the human eye observes casually and incuriously, the eye of the camera (the lens) notes with relentless fidelity.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
Suppose we took a thousand negatives… combining the elegances, the squalor, the curiosities, the monuments, the sad faces, the triumphant faces, the power, the irony, the strength, the decay, the past, the present, the future of a city – that would be my favorite picture.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
The art is in selecting what is worthwhile to take the trouble about.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
What we need of equipment is this: let it possess as good a structure as the real-life content that surrounds us. We need more simplifications to free us for seeing.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
Photography doesn’t teach you to express your emotions; it teaches you how to see.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
The idea was to interpret science sensibly, with good proportion, good balance and good lighting, so we could understand it.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
Furthermore, a good photographer does not merely document, he probes the subject, he ‘uncovers’ it.
BERENICE ABBOTT