If there is any method in the way I take pictures, I believe it lies in this: See the subject first. Do not try to force it to be a picture of this, that or the other thing. Stand apart from it. Then something will happen. The subject will reveal itself.
BILL BRANDTPhotography is not a sport. It has no rules. Everything must be dared and tried!
More Bill Brandt Quotes
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We are most of us too busy, too worried, too intent on proving ourselves right, too obsessed with ideas to stand and stare
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I photographed what the camera was seeing. I interfered very little, and the lens produced anatomical images and shapes which my eyes had never observed.
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It is the gift of seeing the life around them clearly and vividly, as something that is exciting in its own right. It is an innate gift, varying in intensity with the individual’s temperament and environment.
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And only the photographer himself knows the effect he wants. He should know by instinct, grounded in experience, what subjects are enhanced by hard or soft, light or dark treatment.
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Photography has no rules, it is not a sport. It is the result which counts, no matter how it is achieved.
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Andre Breton once said that a portrait should not only be an image but an oracle one questions, and that the photographer’s aim should be a profound likeness, which physically and morally predicts the subject’s entire future.
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The vital elements are often momentary, change-sent things … a gleam of light on water, a trail of smoke from a passing train, a cat crossing the threshold.
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Sometimes they are a matter of luck; the photographer could not expect or hope for them. Sometimes they are a matter of patience, waiting for an effect to be repeated that he has seen and lost or for one that he anticipates.
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The photographer must possess and preserve the receptive faculties of a child who looks at the world for the first time.
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Photography is not a sport. It has no rules. Everything must be dared and tried!
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Indeed, I feel the simplest approach can often be most effective. A subject placed squarely in the center of the frame, if attention is not distracted from it by fussy surroundings, has a simple dignity which makes it all the more impressive.
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It is essential for the photographer to know the effect of his lenses. The lens is his eye, and it makes or ruins his pictures.
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It is part of the photographer’s job to see more intensely than most people do. He must have and keep in him something of the receptiveness of a child who looks at the world for the first time or of the traveler who enters a strange country
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Photography is still a very new medium and everything must be tried and dare.
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I am not very interested in extraordinary angles. They can be effective on certain occasions, but I do not feel the necessity for them in my own work.
BILL BRANDT