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Of course I realize that photography is not the technical facility as much as it is the eye, and this decision that one makes for the moment at which you are going to snap, you know.

Ben Shahn

Every great historic change has been based on nonconformity, has been bought either with the blood or with the reputation of nonconformists.
BEN SHAHN

Blood Reputation War
It is an intimately communicative affair between the painter and his painting, a conversation back and forth, the painting telling the painter even as it receives its shape and form.
BEN SHAHN

Affair Paint Painting Shapes Telling
When you talk about war on poverty it doesn’t mean very much; but if you can show to some degree this sort of thing then you can show a great deal more of how people are living and a very great percentage of our people today.
BEN SHAHN

Mean People War
Only an individual can imagine, invent, or create. The whole audience of art is an audience of individuals.
BEN SHAHN

Art Imagine Individuality
Nobody had ever done it before, deliberately. Now it’s called documentary, which I suppose is all right … We just took pictures that cried out to be taken.
BEN SHAHN

Call Cried Deliberately Documentary Suppose
Each artist comes to the painting or sculpture because there he can be told that he, the individual, transcends all classes and flouts all predictions. In the work of art, he finds his uniqueness confirmed.
BEN SHAHN

Art Class Prediction Sculpture
All art is based on nonconformity … Without nonconformity we would have had no Bill of Rights or Magna Carta, no public education system, no nation upon this continent, no continent, no science at all, no philosophy, and considerably fewer religions.
BEN SHAHN

Art Philosophy Rights
The artist is likely to be looked upon with some uneasiness by the more conservative members of society.
BEN SHAHN

Artist Conservative Member
I was brought in, not in the photographic department at all, I was brought in on a thing called Special Skills. I was to do posters, pamphlets, murals, propaganda in general, you know.
BEN SHAHN

Pamphlets Propaganda Skills Special
Now, when I came on to Washington to begin my job, I was so interested in photography at that time that I really would have preferred to work with Stryker than with my department, which was more artistic if you wish.
BEN SHAHN

Department Jobs Photography Wish Work
An ametuer is an artist who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint. A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint.
BEN SHAHN

Artist Jobs Wife
Now, my knowledge of photography was terribly limited.
BEN SHAHN

Knowledge Limited Photography
I confess that Roy [Stryker] was a little bit dictatorial in his editing and he ruined quite a number of my pictures, which he stopped doing later. He used to punch a hole through a negative. Some of them were incredibly valuable. He didn’t understand at the time.
BEN SHAHN

Editing Incredible Negative Numbers Stop
A youngster told me recently that he was going to give himself a year to see if he has talent. A year! It takes a lifetime to see if you have it. Painting is total engagement.
BEN SHAHN

Lifetime Planting Recent Youngster
To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter.
BEN SHAHN

Abstract Essence Matter
The values that reside in art are anarchic, they are every man’s loves and hates and his momentary divine revelation.
BEN SHAHN

Art Hate Men Revelation
Of course I realize that photography is not the technical facility as much as it is the eye, and this decision that one makes for the moment at which you are going to snap, you know.
BEN SHAHN

Decision Eye Photography
If you’re going to be an artist, all life is your subject. And all your experience is part of your art.
BEN SHAHN

Art Giving Years
A work of art rests its merits in traditional qualities. It may constitute a remarkable feat in craftsmanship; it may be a searching study of psychological states; it may be a nostalgic glance backward.
BEN SHAHN

Art Numbers Quality
I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.
BEN SHAHN

Artist Believe Label
If one has set for himself the position that his painting shall not misconstrue his personal mode of thinking, then he must be rather alert to just what he does think.
BEN SHAHN

Mode Painting Personal Thinking
To abstract is to draw out the essence of a matter. To abstract in art is to separate certain fundamentals from irrelevant material which surrounds them.
BEN SHAHN

Art Essence Matter
I feel, having the choices I had, I felt I had more control over my own medium than I did over photography.
BEN SHAHN

Choices Felt Mediums Photography
It is not the how of painting but the why. To imitate a style would be a little like teaching a tone of voice or a personality.
BEN SHAHN

Personality Teaching Voice
We tried to present the ordinary in an extraordinary manner. But that’s the paradox because the only thing extraordinary about it was that it was so ordinary.
BEN SHAHN

Done Ordinary Taken
Art almost always has its ingredient of impudence, its flouting of established authority, so that it may substitute its own authority and its own enlightenment.
BEN SHAHN

Art Enlightenment May Substitute
The time when I had desire to go to the United States I didn’t have a penny. It was in the middle of the depression, you know. I couldn’t get as far as Hoboken at that time.
BEN SHAHN

Desire Pregnancy United States

Of course I realize that photography is not the technical facility as much as it is the eye, and this decision that one makes for the moment at which you are going to snap, you know.

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Of course I realize that photography is not the technical facility as much as it is the eye, and this decision that one makes for the moment at which you are going to snap, you know.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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