You go into a room and you know where you’re welcome; you know where you’re unwelcome.
DOROTHEA LANGELife, for people, begins to crumble on the edges; they don’t realize it.
More Dorothea Lange Quotes
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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.
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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 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.
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It is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque.
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The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.
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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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Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion… the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate.
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One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.
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Sometimes in a hostile situation you stick around because hostility itself is important.
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The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects.
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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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A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.
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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.
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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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Photographers stop photographing a subject too soon before they have exhausted the possibilities.
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Bring the viewer to your side, include him in your thought. He is not a bystander.
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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 believe that what we call beautiful is generally a by-product.
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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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To me, beauty appears when one feels deeply, and art is an act of total attention.
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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.
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I encountered that many times, in unexpected places. And I have learned to recognize it when I see it.
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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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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.
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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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go in over your head, not just up to your neck.
DOROTHEA LANGE