The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects. So that no one would say, how did you do it, where did you find it, but they would say that such things could be.
DOROTHEA LANGEI trust my instincts. I don’t distrust them. They haven’t led me astray. It’s when I’ve made up my mind to be efficient that is when I have gone wrong.
More Dorothea Lange Quotes
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Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
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A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.
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Ours is a time of the machine, and ours is a need to know that the machine can be put to creative human effort. If not, the machine can destroy us.
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Being disabled gave me an immense advantage. People are kinder to you. It puts you on a different level than if you go into a situation whole and secure.
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I many times encountered courage, real courage. Undeniable courage. I’ve heard it said that that was the highest quality of the human animal.
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That frame of mind that you need to make fine pictures of a very wonderful subject, you cannot do it by not being lost yourself.
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One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.
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You go into a room and you know where you’re welcome; you know where you’re unwelcome.
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The best way to go into an unknown territory is to go in ignorant, ignorant as possible, with your mind wide open, as wide open as possible and not having to meet anyone else’s requirement but your own.
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I believe that what we call beautiful is generally a by-product.
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It is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque.
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This benefit of seeing…can come only if you pause a while, extricate yourself from the maddening mob of quick impressions ceaselessly battering our lives, and look thoughtfully at a quiet image…the viewer must be willing to pause, to look again, to meditate.
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No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually.
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While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.
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To know ahead of time what you’re looking for means you’re then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting, and often false.
DOROTHEA LANGE






