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A photograph has no value unless it looks exactly like a photograph and nothing else.

Edward Weston

Results alone should be appraised; the way in which these are achieved is of importance only to the maker.
EDWARD WESTON

Makers Results Way
If I have any ‘message’ worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.
EDWARD WESTON

Cutting Giving Photography
For the obvious reason that nature – unadulterated and unimproved by man – is simply chaos. In fact, the camera proves that nature is crude and lacking in arrangement.
EDWARD WESTON

Arrangement Cameras Facts Lack Men
I was extravagant in the matter of cameras – anything photographic – I had to have the best. But that was to further my work. In most things I have gone along with the plainest – or without.
EDWARD WESTON

Cameras Matter Photography
Art is based on order. The world is full of ‘sloppy Bohemians’ and their work betrays them.
EDWARD WESTON

Art Order World
A lifetime can well be spent correcting and improving one’s own faults without bothering about others.
EDWARD WESTON

Bother Faults Lifetime
Clouds, torsos, shells, peppers, trees, rocks, smoke stacks, are but interdependent, interrelated parts of a whole, which is life.
EDWARD WESTON

Clouds Interdepend Rocks Tree
There is nothing like a Bach fugue to remove me from a discordant moment… only Bach hold up fresh and strong after repeated playing. I can always return to Bach when the other records weary me.
EDWARD WESTON

Photography Records Strong
When money enters in – then, for a price, I become a liar – and a good one I can be whether with pencil or subtle lighting or viewpoint. I hate it all, but so do I support not only my family, but my own work.
EDWARD WESTON

Hate Liars Support
If I am interested, amazed, stimulated to work, that is sufficient reason to thank the gods, and go ahead!
EDWARD WESTON

Amazed Interest Reason
I want the stark beauty that a lens can so exactly render presented without interference of artistic effect.
EDWARD WESTON

Lenses Photography Want
……so called “composition” becomes a personal thing, to be developed along with technique, as a personal way of seeing.
EDWARD WESTON

Composition Technique Way
Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn’t photogenic.
EDWARD WESTON

Car Photography Yards
…through this photographic eye you will be able to look out on a new light-world, a world for the most part uncharted and unexplored, a world that lies waiting to be discovered and revealed.
EDWARD WESTON

Eye Light Lying
It’s hard not to tell the truth with a camera. Artists are particularly good at that.
EDWARD WESTON

Artist Cameras Telling Truth
“Only with effort can the camera be forced to lie: basically it is an honest medium: so the photographer is much more likely to approach nature in a spirit of inquiry, of communion, instead of with the saucy swagger of self-dubbed “artists”.”
EDWARD WESTON

Artist Lying Photography
I am not limiting myself to theories, so I never question the rightness to my approach.
EDWARD WESTON

Approach Theory
The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.
EDWARD WESTON

Photography Steel Substance
Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.
EDWARD WESTON

Hard Work Matter Photography
I see no reason for recording the obvious.
EDWARD WESTON

Photographer Photography Reason
The painters have no copyright on modern art!… I believe in, and make no apologies for, photography: it is the most important graphic medium of our day. It does not have to be, indeed cannot be – compared to painting – it has different means and aims.
EDWARD WESTON

Art Believe Photography
No photographer is better than the simplest of cameras
EDWARD WESTON

Cameras Photographer Simplest
Dare to be irrational! – keep free from formulas, open to any fresh impulse, fluid.
EDWARD WESTON

Courage Dare Fluid
The great scientist dares to differ from accepted ‘facts’ – think irrationally – let the artist do likewise.
EDWARD WESTON

Artist Facts Thinking
My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me.
EDWARD WESTON

Photographer Photography Program
Is love like art – something always ahead, never quite attained.
EDWARD WESTON

Art Atatined Never Quit
The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer’s understanding of his subject and mastery of his process.
EDWARD WESTON

Important Photography Understanding

A photograph has no value unless it looks exactly like a photograph and nothing else.

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A photograph has no value unless it looks exactly like a photograph and nothing else.

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