I believe in living with the camera, and not using the camera.
DOROTHEA LANGEI’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.
More Dorothea Lange Quotes
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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.
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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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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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The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.
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One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.
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No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually.
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I had to get my camera to register things that were more important than how poor they were–their pride, their strength, their spirit.
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It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.
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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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Bring the viewer to your side, include him in your thought. He is not a bystander.
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You go into a room and you know where you’re welcome; you know where you’re unwelcome.
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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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Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.
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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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To me, beauty appears when one feels deeply, and art is an act of total attention.
DOROTHEA LANGE






