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From time to time I come across a quotation by a photographer, or by a writer about photography, that I don’t want to lose. This is where I record them.

The quotations included here are not meant to be complete philosophies, nor are they in any particular order. They are just things that seem to me to sum up photographic/artistic ideas very well and which I want to be able to refer back to. Where I know the source I include it so that you can go back and read the context of the original if the excerpt seems interesting to you as well.

Last updated: July 2009

Jay Maisel: On seeing and showing

Essentially, what I am looking for is to get what I saw. I’m not trying to create something to show you how clever I am. I am trying to show you that I saw something you might not have noticed.

Quoted in Rangefinder magazine in October 2007

Joseph Joubert: On achieving things

Genius may begin great works, but only continued labour completes them

This is attributed to Joubert, but the only references I can find online are to the same, very secondary, source that I found it in. But it matters not. The idea is the thing, and the idea here is expressed with clarity.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh: Guide to artists

Reason informed by emotion…expressed in beauty…elevated by earnestness…lightened by humour…that’s the ideal that should guide all artists

Widely credited, and always in exactly that form. I don’t have the original source.

Kjell Harald: On objectives

I want to push my creativity, not my productivity.

From his blog: lentic.net

John Szarkowski: On large prints

With virtuoso technique, large prints can look almost as good as small ones.

Apparently discussing some prints made by Ansel Adams. My source: The Online Photographer / Mike Johnston

Laurence Peter: On originality

Originality is the art of remembering what you hear but forgetting where you heard it.

No first-hand source found.

Eliott Erwitt: On thinking

That’s one of the problems about taking pictures. Some people think when taking pictures. They shouldn’t think. Thinking is bad for taking pictures.

Thinking is good for conceptualising. Taking pictures has to do with seeing things. Being surprised. Being interested. It is not about thinking, it is about discovering.

A part of an interview on Pixchannel.

Minor White: On what to photograph

If he (a photographer) were to walk a block in a state of sensitized sympathy to everything to be seen, he would be exhausted before the block was up and out of film long before that.

Contained in ‘Photographers on Photography’, ed Nathan Lyons, George Eastman House, 1966

Minor White: Seeing as creativity

It is time that we recalled that “man seen” or “man found” is just as expressive of creativeness as “man made”. It is time to remember (the period of discovery is long past) that the camera lures, and then compels, a man to create through seeing. It demands that he learn to make the realm of his responses to the world the raw material of his creative activity.

Contained in ‘Photographers on Photography’, ed Nathan Lyons, George Eastman House, 1966

Gjon Mili: A photograph is…

A photograph is a brief collusion between foresight and chance. It need not invite reflection, so much as create a shock which alerts the viewer to the strangeness of the passage.

In ‘Photographs and Recollections’ 1980.

Jane Bown: On research

Q: When you go to photograph somebody, do you do a lot of research about them?

JB: No, none at all. The less I know the better. No I don’t. I prefer to know nothing.

Q: And why is that?

JB: Well, it is so much easier. I mean if you start thinking about them – how you ought to do them. I think you get it all wrong. I’m very visual.

From a BBC radio interview March 29th 2006

Picasso: On fame

Of all – hunger, extreme poverty, the incomprehension of the public – fame is by far the worst. It is the castigation by God of the artist. It is sad. It is true.

Quoted by Patrick O’Brian in his biography of Picasso ISBN 0007173571

Garry Winogrand: A photograph is…

In the end, maybe the correct language would be how the fact of putting four edges around a collection of information or facts transforms it. A photograph is not what was photographed, it’s something else.

Interviews with photographers by Barbara Diamonstein, 1981/1982, Rizoli: New York

Garry Winogrand: On viewing photographs

Q: And how do you expect the viewer to respond to your photographs?

Winogrand: I have no expectations. None at all.

Q: Well, what do you want to evoke?

Winogrand: I have no ideas on that subject. Two people could look at the same flowers and feel differently about them. Why not? I’m not making ads. I couldn’t care less. Everybody’s entitled to their own experience.

Interviews with photographers by Barbara Diamonstein, 1981 – 1982, Rizoli: New York

Joel Meyerowitz: On life

I watch. That’s my life.

Joel Meyerowitz, Leica World 1/2005

Mike Johnston: On the relationship of photography to reality

We really do know that with film, either picture would be difficult to fake, and in any event, why would you? Who would think of it? In both cases, the pictures are wonderful because we’re willing to believe – provisionally, anyway – that they’re true, that they are records of something real. This is what gives life and richness to most, if not all, of the photography I’ve learned to love. What it implies is that the real world is a strange and wonderful place, with wondrous sights all around us, ephemeral, shifting, but there, and sometimes caught.

From his blog, The Online Photographer, August 2007.

David Vestal: On composition

The way to arrange pictures well is to pay attention to what you see when photographing and printing and to fill the pictures with things that are worth seeing.

From Chapter 23 of The Art of Black and White Enlarging ISBN 0061818968

John Szarkowski: On photography as pointing

“One might compare the art of photography to the act of pointing, Mr. Szarkowski wrote. It must be true that some of us point to more interesting facts, events, circumstances, and configurations than others.”

As quoted in the New York Times, July 9th 2007.

Ernst Haas: On what we photograph

There is only you and your camera. The limitations in your photography are in yourself, for what we see is what we are.

Widely attributed to Haas. No underlying source found.

LS Lowry: On art

“Painting is a marvellous way of passing the time.”

Referred to in the 2007 LS Lowry lecture by Harold Jacobson.

Garry Winogrand: On photography and photographs

“When I’m photographing, I see life. That’s what I deal with. I don’t have pictures in my head.”

and

“….all a photograph does is describe light on surface. That’s all there is.”

From a 1982 PBS broadcast with Bill Moyers.

Mike Johnston: On viewing photographs

“Who said this was easy?”

Written on his blog, The Online Photographer, here. March 2007.

Mac Holbert: Surrealism

“I jokingly refer to my slant on the world as ’so realism’. Surrealism has many definitions but the one that best fits my work is, ‘characterized by incongruous juxtapositions.’ I search out aspects of everyday experience that, in my eye, stand out from everything else. I look for the ironic, the humorous. I find that much of traditional fine art photography takes itself too seriously and in many cases demands an educated intellectual framework to fully appreciate. I’m more interested in what’s in the heart- what the viewer feels about incongruity.”

From a published conversation with John Paul Caponigro on JPC’s website in March 2007.

Lisette Model: Actually looking

“New images surround us everywhere. They are invisible only because of sterile routine convention and fear.”

{Widely attributed to Lisette Model and sourced to ‘Darkroom 2, 1978′ by photoquotes.com} The source has proved to be incorrect. Anybody know the true source?

John Szarkowski: Photography isn’t just about ideas.

“Some photographers think the idea is enough. I told a good story in my Getty talk, a beautiful story, to the point: Ducasse says to his friend Mallarmé – I think this is a true story – he says, “You know, I’ve got a lot of good ideas for poems, but the poems are never very good.” Mallarmé says, “Of course, you don’t make poems out of ideas, you make poems out of words.” Really good, huh? Really true. So, photographers who aren’t so good think that you make photographs out of ideas. And they generally get only about halfway to the photograph and think that they’re done.”

A part of an interview by Holly Myers and Tom Christie in LA Weekly (6th December 2006).

Leonard Freed: Photography is…

“Ultimately, photography is about who you are. It is seeking the truth in relation to yourself. And seeking truth becomes a habit.”

Quoted in the obituary on Magnum Photos, December 2006.

Stephen Johnson: Landscape photgraphy and living

“I hope that photography (with its power to portray the real world) can start to move toward understanding, appreciating, and portraying the common wonders of the world, rather than just the special wonders of the world.”

and,

“It has come to the point that landscape photography seems to exist in a world of perpetual sinrises and sunsets, as though the ordinary experience of living does not in and of itself constitute a remarkable experience.”

From a conversation with John Paul Caponigro and quoted in the Nov/Dec 2006 issue of Camera Arts magazine.

Henry Wessel: Soft Eyes

“Part of it has to do with the discipline of being actively receptive. At the core of this receptivity is a process that might be called soft eyes. It is a physical sensation. You are not looking for something. You are open, receptive. At some point you are in front of something that you cannot ignore.”

This was part of a mixed interview and review published in The New York Times on May 21st 2006. The byline author was Philip Gefter.

Paul Butzi: About art

“Art is a Verb, not a Noun.”

This appears on Paul’s website, butzi.net, in one of his articles where he muses about the nature of art.

David Bayles and Ted Orland: Why is doesn’t matter if nobody is much interested in most of your art.

“The function of the overwhelming majority of your artwork is simply to teach you how to make the small fraction of your artwork that soars.”

From ‘Art and Fear’. ISBN 0961454733. Page 5 of the 2005 printing.

Hugh Macleod: Selling art

“People don’t buy art. Not really. But they do buy wine.”

This appears on Hugh’s website, gapingvoid.com, as a part of his explanation as to why he gives his art away.

Edward Weston: Becoming a craftsman

“Given a big enough artist, and he will make himself a consummate craftsman to better express his thoughts.”

This appears to be from ‘America and Photography’ 1929 and it gets quoted and misquoted around the web. If anybody can confirm the source I would be grateful.

David Hockney: Enjoying the moment

“It seems to me to be the most beautiful printing of photography I have seen. The colour on the paper seems almost physical. The surface of the paper itself is beautiful. My reply therefore to how permanent the colour is; is that colour is fugitive in life, like it is in pictures, indeed colour is the most fugitive element in all pictures, a great deal more than line. Dimming down the light immediately alters colour. It does not alter line. Enjoy the moment. The piece of paper is beautiful it will slowly change like everything else. What’s the point of an ugly piece of paper that will last forever?”

This text first appeared in the ‘20 Photographs’ exhibition catalogue 1996. Published by David Hockney Studio, Los Angeles, 1996. I’ve not seen the original. My source was a degree dissertation by Mamata B. Herland

Piet Mondrian: Finding things out

“I don’t want pictures, I just want to find things out.”

This appears in Galenson ‘Old Masters and young geniuses’ 2006 ISBN 0691121095 and probably originally Holty ‘A Memoir of Mondrian’ Arts Magazine, Vol.31, September 1957

Edward Weston: Composition and the freshness of vision

“Now to consult rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. Such rules and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection and after-examination, and are in no way a part of the creative impetus. When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision. Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial cliches.”

This appeared in an essay by Weston in volume 37 of ‘Camera Craft’ 1930 (pp 313-320)

Art Historian in volume 9 of ‘Art of the Western World’ : Trusting museums

“Art is the religion of today. You go; you don’t understand; but you trust. That’s what religion is about. You have to trust because it is in a museum.”

‘Art of the Western World’ is a TV series produced by WNET/New York and narrated my Michael Wood. It is available as a video on demand from www.learner.org. The extract was spoken by one of the guest art historians.

Tom Fairs: Things seen

“My interest is primarily in things seen……I have no theories, no special techniques and no information to communicate.”

This was reported in ‘The Jackdaw’ and I do not know what the dots are hiding. If anybody has a fuller version of the quote or an original source please let me know.

David Ward: Seeing

“What you need to cultivate first and foremost in photography is, I believe, you vision; you need to train yourself to really see, not just glance around you but to concentrate totally on your surroundings.”

David Ward, Landscape within (ISBN 1 902538 34 X)

David Vestal: Why People Photograph

“I am self-indulgent. When I photograph, I’m scratching the same itch that makes people gossip or tell jokes; only this gossip is visual, not verbal. There is nothing exalted about it, and it does not transcend any reality whatever. It tries to pass an experience on as nearly intact as possible.

What happens, and (maybe) why. The process is that something comes in my eye and stimulates me to shoot because I’m bursting to let it out again – preferably to inflict it on an audience. If the audience likes it too, so much the better; but my photography is selfish, not altruistic. I do it for me.

It’s like conversation. Watch people talking. Notice how we wait with poorly hidden impatience for the other fellow to stop talking so we can start. Apparently it is more blessed to send than to receive. A photographer carries on a one-sided conversation through vision, with enormous satisfaction. (’Look what I saw!’)”

David Vestal, The Craft of Photography. I’ve not seen this in the original but it has been confirmed by Oren Grad