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 LANGEPhotographers stop photographing a subject too soon before they have exhausted the possibilities.
More Dorothea Lange Quotes
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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.
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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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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.
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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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I had to get my camera to register things that were more important than how poor they were–their pride, their strength, their spirit.
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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.
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Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.
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… 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.
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I realize more and more what it takes to be a really good photographer. You go in over your head, not just up to your neck.
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The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
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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.
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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.
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Artists are controlled by the life that beats in them, like the ocean beats on the shore.
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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.
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Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
DOROTHEA LANGE