Travel books are a useful, modest and yet self-contained way of writing literature. These are books that have a practical use, even though, or precisely because, countries change from year to year and in fixing them as you have seen them you record their changing essence; and in such books you can express something that […]
When I first made pictures, I would say in words, out loud to others, or silently to myself, “I am going to make a picture of _______ .” Then, I would go about making the picture. The result was second hand and non-visual, a substitute for the words. It was not vivid and exciting Keith […]
Whenever I see a new picture I immediately seem to like and find aesthetically pleasing, I am suspicious. This cannot possibly be good, I think to myself. This cannot possibly be art. It feels like the spontaneous pleasure, the immediate sense of aesthetic satisfaction I derive in such instances is too easy and too shallow […]
La photographie, ainsi que je la comprends, est simplement un autre moyen de prendre des notes. Comme toutes notes, les notes photographiques sont forcément incomplètes, car il se peut qu’elles n’expriment pas le sujet sous toutes ses faces, mais chaque photographie doit toucher l’essentiel du sujet car le déclic rend cette photographie définitive. H. Cartier-Bresson, […]
It is important for us not to compare our work to the work of others, as challenging as that may be. It is simply human nature to look outside ourselves, rather than face that which exists internally. Comparison is ego-based and unproductive in the long run. Dan Winters, Road to Seeing, 133
And all had, after long acquaintance, at last understood that familiarity with a place will not lead to absolute knowledge but only to ever further enquiry. R. Macfarlane, The Old Ways (2013), 111
… the photographer’s main problem, like that of the landscape architect, is to establish a point of view which directs the movement of the imagination. Caption to E. Atget’s photograph, “The Orangerie Staircase.”
Every photographer knows that a photograph simplifies.… A photograph quotes from appearances but, in quoting, simplifies them. This simplification can increase legibility. John Berger, Understanding a Photograph (2013), 74
I do not photograph for ulterior purposes. I photograph for the thing itself—for the photograph—without consideration of how it may be used. Eliot Porter, Intimate Landscapes (New York, 1979), 11
The details of nature become more interesting, and the become more beautiful too, as one becomes more aware of them. Eliot Porter, The Color of Wildness (New York, 2001), 132