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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

The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Photographer Photography Unattainable Undertaking Visual
Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Deadening Human Spirit Surefire Thing
Sometimes in a hostile situation you stick around because hostility itself is important.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Around Hostile Important Itself Situation Sometimes
One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Blind Camera Photography Realy Styricken Tomorrow Use
… 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

All Came Concentrate Kind Only People Picture Take
Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion… the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Exhaustion Hate Life Photography Theme
The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Consequence Good Object Photo Photograph
go in over your head, not just up to your neck.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Go Head Neck Need Over Passion
Photography is a lot like telling a large predatory cat what to do-while an audience of people you can’t see watches you.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Audience Cat Large People Photographer Photography Predatory Tell
It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Accident Become Lion More Photographer Tamer
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.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Ignorant Mind Open Possible Territory Unknown Wide
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.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Benefits Come Extricate Impression Look Maddening Mob Pause Quick Quiet
To me, beauty appears when one feels deeply, and art is an act of total attention.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Act Appear Art Attention Beauty Deeply Feel Total
I many times encountered courage, real courage. Undeniable courage. I’ve heard it said that that was the highest quality of the human animal.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Animal Courage Encounter Quality Real
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.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Astray Efficient Gone Instinct led Mind Trust Wrong
A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Documentaries Factual Life Photography
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

Neck Over Photographer Realize Take You
Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Alter Change Hold Inspirational Instant Life Photography Take
No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Closely Country Ever Itself Scruntinzed Visually
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.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Better Everything Fellow Hide Kind People Person See Tell
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

Another Eye Life More Nothing Own Perhaps Photograph Photography Province
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.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Before Disappear Eye Greatest People Vocabulary Word
Life, for people, begins to crumble on the edges; they don’t realize it.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Crumble Edge Enormous People Realizing
Photographers stop photographing a subject too soon before they have exhausted the possibilities.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Before Exhausted Photographer Possibility Soon Subject
The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects. So that no one would say, how did you do it, where did you find it, but they would say that such things could be.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Consequences Good Lens Object Photograph Photography
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

Breath Hope Moment Stand Still Wait Waiting
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

More never Phases Photographer Sure Yourself

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.

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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.

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