This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.
EDWARD WESTONThis then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.
EDWARD WESTONIt’s hard not to tell the truth with a camera. Artists are particularly good at that.
EDWARD WESTONTo compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible.
EDWARD WESTONTo 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 WESTONIf I have any ‘message’ worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.
EDWARD WESTONThe 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 WESTONI am not limiting myself to theories, so I never question the rightness to my approach.
EDWARD WESTONNo photographer is better than the simplest of cameras
EDWARD WESTONA photograph has no value unless it looks exactly like a photograph and nothing else.
EDWARD WESTONClouds, torsos, shells, peppers, trees, rocks, smoke stacks, are but interdependent, interrelated parts of a whole, which is life.
EDWARD WESTONFor 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 WESTONThe 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“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 WESTONI 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 WESTONWhy limit yourself to what your eyes see when you have an opportunity to extend your vision?
EDWARD WESTONPhotography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.
EDWARD WESTON