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.
DOROTHEA LANGEPhotographers stop photographing a subject too soon before they have exhausted the possibilities.
More Dorothea Lange Quotes
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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.
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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 camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
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go in over your head, not just up to your neck.
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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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Photography is a lot like telling a large predatory cat what to do-while an audience of people you can’t see watches you.
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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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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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A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.
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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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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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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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No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually.
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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 believe in living with the camera, and not using the camera.
DOROTHEA LANGE