The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
DOROTHEA LANGEI had to get my camera to register things that were more important than how poor they were–their pride, their strength, their spirit.
More Dorothea Lange Quotes
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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 -
It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
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 -
It is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
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 -
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 -
… 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 -
You go into a room and you know where you’re welcome; you know where you’re unwelcome.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
Life, for people, begins to crumble on the edges; they don’t realize it.
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 -
The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
Artists are controlled by the life that beats in them, like the ocean beats on the shore.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
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