Photography is not only drawing with light, though light is the indispensable agent of its being. It is modeling or sculpturing with light, to reproduce the plastic form of natural objects. It is painting with light.
BERENICE ABBOTTLike 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.
More Berenice Abbott Quotes
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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.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
Let us first say what photography is not. A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. It is not just a pretty picture, not an exercise in contortionist techniques and sheer print quality.
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 -
Today we are confronted with reality on the vastest scale mankind has known and this puts a greater responsibility on the photographer.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
The photograph may be presented as finely and artistically as you will, but to merit serious consideration, must be directly connected with the world we live in.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
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.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
I didn’t decide to be a photographer; I just happened to fall into it.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
Photography doesn’t teach you to express your emotions; it teaches you how to see.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
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.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
The idea was to interpret science sensibly, with good proportion, good balance and good lighting, so we could understand it.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
Abstraction in photography is ridiculous, and is only an imitation of painting. We stopped imitating painters a hundred years ago, so to imitate them in this day and age is laughable.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
I agree that all good photographs are documents, but I also know that all documents are certainly not good photographs.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
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.
BERENICE ABBOTT