It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.
DOROTHEA LANGEIt is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.
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.
DOROTHEA LANGEThe camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
DOROTHEA LANGEOne should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.
DOROTHEA LANGEI believe in living with the camera, and not using the camera.
DOROTHEA LANGEYou 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 LANGEYou go into a room and you know where you’re welcome; you know where you’re unwelcome.
DOROTHEA LANGEBring the viewer to your side, include him in your thought. He is not a bystander.
DOROTHEA LANGEI many times encountered courage, real courage. Undeniable courage. I’ve heard it said that that was the highest quality of the human animal.
DOROTHEA LANGEA documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.
DOROTHEA LANGEThis 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.
DOROTHEA LANGEPhotography 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 LANGEIt is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque.
DOROTHEA LANGEI 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 LANGEArtists are controlled by the life that beats in them, like the ocean beats on the shore.
DOROTHEA LANGEPhotography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
DOROTHEA LANGE