… 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 LANGEI believe in living with the camera, and not using the camera.
More Dorothea Lange Quotes
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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.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
I believe that what we call beautiful is generally a by-product.
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Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
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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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We know by now how to photograph poor people. What we don’t know is how to photograph affluence – whose other face is poverty.
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The people who are garrulous and wear their heart on their sleeve and tell you everything, that’s one kind of person, but the fellow who’s hiding behind a tree and hoping you don’t see him is the fellow that you’d better find out why.
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The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.
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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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It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.
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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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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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The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects.
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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 LANGE -
One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.
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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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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.
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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.
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To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.
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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.
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Photographers stop photographing a subject too soon before they have exhausted the possibilities.
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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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The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
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Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.
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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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A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.
DOROTHEA LANGE