While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.
DOROTHEA LANGEWe know by now how to photograph poor people. What we don’t know is how to photograph affluence – whose other face is poverty.
More Dorothea Lange Quotes
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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 -
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 -
To me, beauty appears when one feels deeply, and art is an act of total attention.
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 -
The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
go in over your head, not just up to your neck.
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 -
I had to get my camera to register things that were more important than how poor they were–their pride, their strength, their spirit.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
I encountered that many times, in unexpected places. And I have learned to recognize it when I see it.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
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 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 -
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