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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

Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Past Photographer Photography
I am so fascinated with this century it will help keep me alive. I’ll be there until the last minute, fighting.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Alive Fighting Lasts Photography
It is or should be a significant document, a penetrating statement, which can be described in a very simple term-selectivity.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Penetrate Photography Selectivity Simple Term
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

May Merit Photography World
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 ABBOTT

Art Bowery Girl Nice Photography
I have yet to see a fine photograph which is not a good document.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Document Fine Photograph
I haven’t seen too many images that have impressed me!
BERENICE ABBOTT

Havens Impressed Photographer
What to me is anathema – a corpse-like, outmoded hangover – is for photography to be a bad excuse for another medium. … Is not photography good enough in itself, that it must be made to look like something else, supposedly superior?
BERENICE ABBOTT

Hangover Looks Photography
The photographer is the contemporary being par excellence; through his eyes the now becomes the past.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Excellence Eye Past Photography
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

Age Photography Years
I wanted to combine science and photography in a sensible, unemotional way. Some people’s ideas of scientific photography is just arty design, something pretty. That was not the idea.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Ideas People Photography
The art is in selecting what is worthwhile to take the trouble about.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Art Photographer Trouble
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

Exercise Photography Simple
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.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Believe Photography Real
To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it. The photographer creates, evolves a better, more selective, more acute eye by looking ever more sharply at what is going on in the world.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Mean Philosophy Photography
I agree that all good photographs are documents, but I also know that all documents are certainly not good photographs.
BERENICE ABBOTT

Agree Certainty Document Photographer

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.

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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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