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I 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.

Dorothea Lange

You know there are moments such as these when time stands still and all you do is hold your breath and hope it will wait for you.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Breath Hope Moment Stand Still Wait Waiting
One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Blind Camera Photography Reality Stricken Tomorrow
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

Ahead Along False Know Limit Look Mean Own Photographer Photography Preconception Put
Photography today appears to be in a state of flight… The familiar is made strange, the unfamiliar grotesque. The amateur forces his Sundays into a series of unnatural poses.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Appear Fight Photography State Sunday Today
go in over your head, not just up to your neck.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Go Head Neck Need Over Passion
It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Accident Become Lion More Photographer Tamer
It is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Enough Life Obvious Photography Picturesque
No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually … I know what we could make of it if people only thought we could dare look at ourselves.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Close Country Itself Look People Scruntnize Visually
Bring the viewer to your side, include him in your thought. He is not a bystander.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Bystanders Perception Side Thought Viewer
Life, for people, begins to crumble on the edges; they don’t realize it.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Crumble Edge Enormous People Realizing
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.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Benefits Come Extricate Impression Look Maddening Mob Pause Quick Quiet
You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Along Around Body Camera Life Neck People Share Shoes Show
… it came to me that what I had to do was to take pictures and concentrate upon people, only people, all kinds of people, people who paid me and people who didn’t.
DOROTHEA LANGE

All Came Concentrate Kind Only People Picture Take
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.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Creative Effort Human Machine Need Time
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.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Ignorant Mind Open Possible Territory Unknown Wide
A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Documentaries Factual Life Photography

I 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.

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I 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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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