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 LANGEThe visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.
More Dorothea Lange Quotes
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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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I believe in living with the camera, and not using the camera.
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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 takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
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Sometimes in a hostile situation you stick around because hostility itself is important.
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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.
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Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.
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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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You know there are moments such as these when time stands still and all you do is hold your breath and hope it will wait for you.
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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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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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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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One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.
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A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph.
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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.
DOROTHEA LANGE