It is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque.
DOROTHEA LANGEOne should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.
More Dorothea Lange Quotes
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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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The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.
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I had to get my camera to register things that were more important than how poor they were–their pride, their strength, their spirit.
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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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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.
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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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Life, for people, begins to crumble on the edges; they don’t realize it.
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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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The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects.
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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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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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Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
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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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Photography is a lot like telling a large predatory cat what to do-while an audience of people you can’t see watches you.
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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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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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The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
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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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To me, beauty appears when one feels deeply, and art is an act of total attention.
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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.
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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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One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.
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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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A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.
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… 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