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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.

Dorothea Lange

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
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.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Advantage Being Different Disabled People Perspective
The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Consequence Good Object Photo Photograph
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
We know by now how to photograph poor people. What we don’t know is how to photograph affluence – whose other face is poverty.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Affiuelence Face People Photograph Poor Poverty Race
Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion… the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Exhaustion Hate Life Photography Theme
Life, for people, begins to crumble on the edges; they don’t realize it.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Crumble Edge Enormous People Realizing
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
Photography is a lot like telling a large predatory cat what to do-while an audience of people you can’t see watches you.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Audience Cat Large People Photographer Photography Predatory Tell
… 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
The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Photographer Photography Unattainable Undertaking Visual
I’ve never not been sure that I was a photographer any more than you would not be sure you were yourself. I was a photographer, or wanting to be a photographer, or beginning – but some phase of photographer I’ve always been.
DOROTHEA LANGE

More never Phases Photographer Sure Yourself
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.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Being Frame Life Lost Make Mind Photography Picture Subject Wonderful Yourself
You go into a room and you know where you’re welcome; you know where you’re unwelcome.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Heart People Tree Unwelcome Welcome
Artists are controlled by the life that beats in them, like the ocean beats on the shore.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Artist Beat Controlled Life Ocean Shore
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 LANGE

Consequences Good Lens Object Photograph Photography
Bring the viewer to your side, include him in your thought. He is not a bystander.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Bystanders Perception Side Thought Viewer
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
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
The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Camera Instrument People Photograph Teach
Sometimes in a hostile situation you stick around because hostility itself is important.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Around Hostile Important Itself Situation Sometimes
go in over your head, not just up to your neck.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Go Head Neck Need Over Passion
Seeing is more than a physiological phenomenon… We see not only with our eyes but with all that we are and all that our culture is. The artist is a professional see-er.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Eye Life More Phenomenon Photography Psychological
The words that come direct from the people are the greatest.If you substitute one out of your own vocabulary, it disappears before your eyes.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Before Disappear Eye Greatest People Vocabulary Word
The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Camera Creativity Inspirational Instrument People Photography Teaching
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
I believe in living with the camera, and not using the camera.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Believe Camera Live Use

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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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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Popular Authors

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