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 LANGENo 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.
More Dorothea Lange Quotes
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You go into a room and you know where you’re welcome; you know where you’re unwelcome.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
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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.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
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.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
… 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 -
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 -
Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
DOROTHEA LANGE -
I believe that what we call beautiful is generally a by-product.
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 -
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 -
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.
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 visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.
DOROTHEA LANGE