Edward Weston Quotes

…through this photographic eye you will be able to look out on a new light-world, a world for the most part uncharted and unexplored, a world that lies waiting to be discovered and revealed.
EDWARD WESTON

Eye Light Lying
I was extravagant in the matter of cameras – anything photographic – I had to have the best. But that was to further my work. In most things I have gone along with the plainest – or without.
EDWARD WESTON

Cameras Matter Photography
Is love like art – something always ahead, never quite attained.
EDWARD WESTON

Art Atatined Never Quit
It’s hard not to tell the truth with a camera. Artists are particularly good at that.
EDWARD WESTON

Artist Cameras Telling Truth
Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.
EDWARD WESTON

Hard Work Matter Photography
……so called “composition” becomes a personal thing, to be developed along with technique, as a personal way of seeing.
EDWARD WESTON

Composition Technique Way
I am not limiting myself to theories, so I never question the rightness to my approach.
EDWARD WESTON

Approach Theory
Results alone should be appraised; the way in which these are achieved is of importance only to the maker.
EDWARD WESTON

Makers Results Way
A lifetime can well be spent correcting and improving one’s own faults without bothering about others.
EDWARD WESTON

Bother Faults Lifetime
Dare to be irrational! – keep free from formulas, open to any fresh impulse, fluid.
EDWARD WESTON

Courage Dare Fluid
When money enters in – then, for a price, I become a liar – and a good one I can be whether with pencil or subtle lighting or viewpoint. I hate it all, but so do I support not only my family, but my own work.
EDWARD WESTON

Hate Liars Support
My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me.
EDWARD WESTON

Photographer Photography Program
The great scientist dares to differ from accepted ‘facts’ – think irrationally – let the artist do likewise.
EDWARD WESTON

Artist Facts Thinking
Clouds, torsos, shells, peppers, trees, rocks, smoke stacks, are but interdependent, interrelated parts of a whole, which is life.
EDWARD WESTON

Clouds Interdepend Rocks Tree
I always work better when I do not reason, when no question of right or wrong enter in,-when my pulse quickens to the form before me without hesitation nor calculation.
EDWARD WESTON

Form Pulse Reason
The painters have no copyright on modern art!… I believe in, and make no apologies for, photography: it is the most important graphic medium of our day. It does not have to be, indeed cannot be – compared to painting – it has different means and aims.
EDWARD WESTON

Art Believe Photography
I want the stark beauty that a lens can so exactly render presented without interference of artistic effect.
EDWARD WESTON

Lenses Photography Want
Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.
EDWARD WESTON

Composition Strongest Way
“Only with effort can the camera be forced to lie: basically it is an honest medium: so the photographer is much more likely to approach nature in a spirit of inquiry, of communion, instead of with the saucy swagger of self-dubbed “artists”.”
EDWARD WESTON

Artist Lying Photography
To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible.
EDWARD WESTON

Mean Photographer Photography
…the pepper is beginning to show signs of strain, and tonight should grace a salad. It has been suggested that I am a cannibal to eat my models.
EDWARD WESTON

Grace Photography Salad
There is nothing like a Bach fugue to remove me from a discordant moment… only Bach hold up fresh and strong after repeated playing. I can always return to Bach when the other records weary me.
EDWARD WESTON

Photography Records Strong
This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.
EDWARD WESTON

Looks Photography Rocks
Why limit yourself to what your eyes see when you have an opportunity to extend your vision?
EDWARD WESTON

Eye Opportunity Vision
If I am interested, amazed, stimulated to work, that is sufficient reason to thank the gods, and go ahead!
EDWARD WESTON

Amazed Interest Reason
I see no reason for recording the obvious.
EDWARD WESTON

Photographer Photography Reason
Art is based on order. The world is full of ‘sloppy Bohemians’ and their work betrays them.
EDWARD WESTON

Art Order World

Other Famous Personalities