I’m not a nice girl; I’m a photographer. (On being told by a Federal Art Project official, after she photographed the Bowery, that a nice girl should not go into such neighborhoods )
BERENICE ABBOTTWhat the human eye observes casually and incuriously, the eye of the camera (the lens) notes with relentless fidelity.
More Berenice Abbott Quotes
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I believe there is no more creative medium than photography to recreate the living world of our time. Photography gladly accepts the challenge because it is at home in its element: namely, realism – real life – the now.
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Photography was the medium preeminently qualified to unite art with science. Photography was born in the years which ushered in the scientific age, an offspring of both science and art.
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The art is in selecting what is worthwhile to take the trouble about.
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The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.
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The idea was to interpret science sensibly, with good proportion, good balance and good lighting, so we could understand it.
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The second challenge has been to impose order onto the things seen and to supply the visual context and the intellectual framework – that to me is the art of photography.
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Today we are confronted with reality on the vastest scale mankind has known and this puts a greater responsibility on the photographer.
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Like every other means of expression, photography, if it is to be utterly honest and direct, should be related to the life of the times – the pulse of today.
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Self-conscious artiness is fatal, but it certainly would not hurt to study composition in general. Having a basic understanding of composition would help construct a better organized image.
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The photographer creates, evolves a better, a more selective, more acute seeing eye by looking ever more sharply at what is going on in the world.
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I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else. Excitement about the subject is the voltage which pushes me over the mountain of drudgery necessary to produce the final photograph.
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Imagine a world without photography, one could only imagine.
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If a medium is representational by nature of the realistic image formed by a lens, I see no reason why we should stand on our heads to distort that function. On the contrary, we should take hold of that very quality, make use of it, and explore it to the fullest.
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The more you do, the more you realize there is to do, what a vast object the metropolis is, and how the work of photographing could go on forever.
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You scientists are the worst photographers in the world and you need the best photographers in the world and I’m the one to do it.
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I’m not a nice girl. I’m a photographer.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
I am so fascinated with this century it will help keep me alive. I’ll be there until the last minute, fighting.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
Like every other means of expression, photography, if it is to be utterly honest and direct, should be related to the life of the times-the pulse of today.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.
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Photography doesn’t teach you to express your emotions; it teaches you how to see.
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Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself.
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It is or should be a significant document, a penetrating statement, which can be described in a very simple term-selectivity.
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I didn’t decide to be a photographer; I just happened to fall into it.
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To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it.
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Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.
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Furthermore, a good photographer does not merely document, he probes the subject, he ‘uncovers’ it.
BERENICE ABBOTT