The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
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.
More Dorothea Lange Quotes
-
-
It is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
We know by now how to photograph poor people. What we don’t know is how to photograph affluence – whose other face is poverty.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
Bring the viewer to your side, include him in your thought. He is not a bystander.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
I believe that what we call beautiful is generally a by-product.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
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 -
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.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
Photographers stop photographing a subject too soon before they have exhausted the possibilities.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
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.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
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 -
To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
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 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 -
One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
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.
DOROTHEA LANGE