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Bring the viewer to your side, include him in your thought. He is not a bystander.

Dorothea Lange

One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Blind Camera Photography Reality Stricken Tomorrow
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 believe in living with the camera, and not using the camera.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Believe Camera Live Use
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 LANGE

Appear Fight Photography State Sunday Today
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
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
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

Ahead Along False Know Limit Look Mean Own Photographer Photography Preconception Put
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
It is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Enough Life Obvious Photography Picturesque
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.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Close Country Itself Look People Scruntnize Visually
You go into a room and you know where you’re welcome; you know where you’re unwelcome.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Heart People Tree Unwelcome Welcome
A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Documentaries Factual Life Photography
No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Closely Country Ever Itself Scruntinzed Visually
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
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.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Along Around Body Camera Life Neck People Share Shoes Show
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 visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Photographer Photography Unattainable Undertaking Visual
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
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
The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Camera Creativity Inspirational Instrument People Photography Teaching
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.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Creative Effort Human Machine Need Time
Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Deadening Human Spirit Surefire Thing
To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Enormous Life Live Touch Undertaking Visual
I had to get my camera to register things that were more important than how poor they were–their pride, their strength, their spirit.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Camera Important Poor Pride Spirit Strength Thing
The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Camera Instrument People Photograph Teach
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
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

Bring the viewer to your side, include him in your thought. He is not a bystander.

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Bring the viewer to your side, include him in your thought. He is not a bystander.

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