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The second challenge has been to impose order onto the things seen and to supply the visual context and the intellectual framework – that to me is the art of photography.

Berenice Abbott

I wanted to combine science and photography in a sensible, unemotional way. Some people’s ideas of scientific photography is just arty design, something pretty. That was not the idea.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Ideas People Photography
It is or should be a significant document, a penetrating statement, which can be described in a very simple term-selectivity.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Penetrate Photography Selectivity Simple Term
I am so fascinated with this century it will help keep me alive. I’ll be there until the last minute, fighting.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Alive Fighting Lasts Photography
I didn’t decide to be a photographer; I just happened to fall into it.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Fall Photographer Photography
Furthermore, a good photographer does not merely document, he probes the subject, he ‘uncovers’ it.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Documents Good Photographer Probe Subject Uncover
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

Hurt Self Understanding
The photographer is the contemporary being par excellence; through his eyes the now becomes the past.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Excellence Eye Past Photography
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

Cities Curiosity Past Photography
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.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Connected Live Photograph Serious
I haven’t seen too many images that have impressed me!
BERENICE ABBOTT

Havens Impressed Photographer
The idea was to interpret science sensibly, with good proportion, good balance and good lighting, so we could understand it.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Balance Idea Photography Understanding
I’m not a nice girl; I’m a photographer. (On being told by a Federal Art Project official, after she photographed the Bowery, that a nice girl should not go into such neighborhoods )
BERENICE ABBOTT

Art Bowery Girl Nice Photography
Abstraction in photography is ridiculous, and is only an imitation of painting. We stopped imitating painters a hundred years ago, so to imitate them in this day and age is laughable.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Age Photography Years
To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it. The photographer creates, evolves a better, more selective, more acute eye by looking ever more sharply at what is going on in the world.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Mean Philosophy Photography
Today we are confronted with reality on the vastest scale mankind has known and this puts a greater responsibility on the photographer.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Reality Responsibility Today
I agree that all good photographs are documents, but I also know that all documents are certainly not good photographs.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Agree Certainty Document Photographer

The second challenge has been to impose order onto the things seen and to supply the visual context and the intellectual framework – that to me is the art of photography.

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The second challenge has been to impose order onto the things seen and to supply the visual context and the intellectual framework – that to me is the art of photography.

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Popular Authors

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