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Photography is not a sport. It has no rules. Everything must be dared and tried!

Bill Brandt

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.
BILL BRANDT

Oracles Portraits Profound
No amount of toying with shades of print or with printing papers will transform a commonplace photograph into anything other than a commonplace photograph.
BILL BRANDT

Paper Photography Shade
I am not interested in rules or conventions. Photography is not a sport.
BILL BRANDT

Conventions Photography Sports
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.
BILL BRANDT

Details Height Patience Seen Sometimes
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.
BILL BRANDT

Believe Emotional Photography
I photographed what the camera was seeing. I interfered very little, and the lens produced anatomical images and shapes which my eyes had never observed.
BILL BRANDT

Interfere Liter Observed Photographer Shapes
The photographer must possess and preserve the receptive faculties of a child who looks at the world for the first time.
BILL BRANDT

Children Looks World
Photographers should follow their own judgment, and not the fads and dictates of others. Photography is still a very new medium and everything is allowed and everything should be tried and dared…
BILL BRANDT

Photography Sports
A photographer must be prepared to catch and hold on to those elements which give distinction to the subject or lend it atmosphere.
BILL BRANDT

Atmosphere Giving Photography
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

Dark Light Photography
The good photographer will produce a competent picture every time whatever his subject. But only when his subject makes and immediate and direct appeal to his own interests will he produce a work of distinction.
BILL BRANDT

Distinction Photographer Produce
Photography is still a very new medium and everything must be tried and dare.
BILL BRANDT

Dare Mediums Photography
We are most of us too busy, too worried, too intent on proving ourselves right, too obsessed with ideas to stand and stare
BILL BRANDT

Busy Most Obsessed Ourselves Satre Worried
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.
BILL BRANDT

Patience Photography Waiting
Photography is not a sport. It has no rules. Everything must be dared and tried!
BILL BRANDT

Everything Photography Sports Tried
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.
BILL BRANDT

Cat Light Passing Stress

Photography is not a sport. It has no rules. Everything must be dared and tried!

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Photography is not a sport. It has no rules. Everything must be dared and tried!

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