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I feel, having the choices I had, I felt I had more control over my own medium than I did over photography.

Ben Shahn

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

Artist Believe Label
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
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
Now, my knowledge of photography was terribly limited.
BEN SHAHN

Knowledge Limited Photography
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
Forms in art arise from the impact of idea upon material… so that thinking and belief and attitudes may endure as actual things.
BEN SHAHN

Art Attitude Thinking
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
Content may by trivial. But I do not think that any person may pronounce either upon the weight or upon the triviality of an idea before its execution.
BEN SHAHN

Ideas Pronounce Thinking Weight
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
Form is the shape of content.
BEN SHAHN

Content Form Shapes
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
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
Personal style, be it that of Michelangelo, or that of Tintoretto… has always been that peculiar personal rapport which has developed between an artist and his medium.
BEN SHAHN

Artist Peculiar Style
The popular eye is not untrained; it is only wrongly trained – trained by inferior and insincere visual representations.
BEN SHAHN

Eye Representation Vision Visual
I became interested in photography when I was sharing a studio with Walker Evans, and found my own sketching was inadequate.
BEN SHAHN

Found Photography Sketching

I feel, having the choices I had, I felt I had more control over my own medium than I did over photography.

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I feel, having the choices I had, I felt I had more control over my own medium than I did over photography.

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Popular Authors

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