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.
BERENICE ABBOTTAbstraction 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.
More Berenice Abbott Quotes
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Does not the very word ‘creative’ mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act – rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life – not death.
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 -
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.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
The art is in selecting what is worthwhile to take the trouble about.
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 -
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 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 -
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 -
To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it.
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 -
Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
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.
BERENICE ABBOTT -
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.
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.
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







