Photography 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 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
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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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Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.
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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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I believe in living with the camera, and not using the camera.
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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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Sometimes in a hostile situation you stick around because hostility itself is important.
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One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.
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The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
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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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The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
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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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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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I encountered that many times, in unexpected places. And I have learned to recognize it when I see it.
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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.
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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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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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Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
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We know by now how to photograph poor people. What we don’t know is how to photograph affluence – whose other face is poverty.
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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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I believe that what we call beautiful is generally a by-product.
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Bring the viewer to your side, include him in your thought. He is not a bystander.
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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.
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To me, beauty appears when one feels deeply, and art is an act of total attention.
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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 good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects.
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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.
DOROTHEA LANGE