To see the Thing itself is essential: the quintessence revealed direct without the fog of impressionism… This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock. Significant presentation – not interpretation.
EDWARD WESTONWhy limit yourself to what your eyes see when you have an opportunity to extend your vision?
More Edward Weston Quotes
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If I have any ‘message’ worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.
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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.
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It’s hard not to tell the truth with a camera. Artists are particularly good at that.
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If I am interested, amazed, stimulated to work, that is sufficient reason to thank the gods, and go ahead!
EDWARD WESTON -
A photograph has no value unless it looks exactly like a photograph and nothing else.
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My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me.
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The great scientist dares to differ from accepted ‘facts’ – think irrationally – let the artist do likewise.
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Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.
EDWARD WESTON -
…the pepper is beginning to show signs of strain, and tonight should grace a salad. It has been suggested that I am a cannibal to eat my models.
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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 -
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.
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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.
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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.
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My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera’s eye may entirely change my idea, even switch me to different subject matter. So I start out with my mind as free from image as the silver film on which I am to record, and I hope as sensitive.
EDWARD WESTON -
Is love like art – something always ahead, never quite attained.
EDWARD WESTON







