Photography has no rules, it is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved.
BILL BRANDTIt is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of a child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country
More Bill Brandt Quotes
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Sometimes they are a matter of luck; the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates.
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By temperament I am not unduly excitable and certainly not trigger-happy. I think twice before I shoot and very often do not shoot at all.
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No amount of toying with shades of print or with printing papers will transform a commonplace photograph into anything other than a commonplace photograph.
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Andre Breton once said that a portrait should not only be an image but an oracle one questions, and that the photographer’s aim should be a profound likeness, which physically and morally predicts the subject’s entire future.
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But I did not always know just what it was I wanted to photograph. I believe it is important for a photographer to discover this, for unless he finds what it is that excites him, what it is that calls forth at once an emotional response, he is unlikely to achieve his best work.
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It is essential for the photographer to know the effect of his lenses. The lens is his eye, and it makes or ruins his pictures.
BILL BRANDT -
It is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of the child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country.
BILL BRANDT -
If there is any method in the way I take pictures, I believe it lies in this: See the subject first. Do not try to force it to be a picture of this, that or the other thing. Stand apart from it. Then something will happen. The subject will reveal itself.
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We are most of us too busy, too worried, too intent on proving ourselves right, too obsessed with ideas to stand and stare
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The photographer must possess and preserve the receptive faculties of a child who looks at the world for the first time.
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The vital elements are often momentary, change-sent things … a gleam of light on water, a trail of smoke from a passing train, a cat crossing the threshold.
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Sometimes they are a matter of luck, sometimes of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that you have seen. It is usually some incidental detail that heightens the effect of a picture, stressing a pattern, deepening the sense of atmosphere.
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And only the photographer himself knows the effect he wants. He should know by instinct, grounded in experience, what subjects are enhanced by hard or soft, light or dark treatment.
BILL BRANDT -
It is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of a child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country
BILL BRANDT -
I am not interested in rules or conventions. Photography is not a sport.
BILL BRANDT