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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.

Dorothea Lange

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
I believe that what we call beautiful is generally a by-product.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Beautiful Believe Generally Product
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

Eye Life More Phenomenon Photography Psychological
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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Neck Over Photographer Realize Take You
A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.
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Documentaries Factual Life Photography
Artists are controlled by the life that beats in them, like the ocean beats on the shore.
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Artist Beat Controlled Life Ocean Shore
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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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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Bystanders Perception Side Thought Viewer
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

Consequences Good Lens Object Photograph Photography
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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Astray Efficient Gone Instinct led Mind Trust Wrong
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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Creative Effort Human Machine Need Time
The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
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Camera Instrument People Photograph Teach
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
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
It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.
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Accident Become Lion More Photographer Tamer
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

Affiuelence Face People Photograph Poor Poverty Race
No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually.
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Closely Country Ever Itself Scruntinzed Visually
go in over your head, not just up to your neck.
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Go Head Neck Need Over Passion
To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.
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Enormous Life Live Touch Undertaking Visual
I believe in living with the camera, and not using the camera.
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Believe Camera Live Use
To me, beauty appears when one feels deeply, and art is an act of total attention.
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Act Appear Art Attention Beauty Deeply Feel Total
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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Ignorant Mind Open Possible Territory Unknown Wide
Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion… the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate.
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Exhaustion Hate Life Photography Theme
I encountered that many times, in unexpected places. And I have learned to recognize it when I see it.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Animal Courage Encounter Highest Said Time Undeniable
Life, for people, begins to crumble on the edges; they don’t realize it.
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Crumble Edge Enormous People Realizing
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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Ahead Along False Know Limit Look Mean Own Photographer Photography Preconception Put
Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.
DOROTHEA LANGE

Deadening Human Spirit Surefire Thing

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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