Quote

To demand the portrait that will be a complete portrait of a person is as futile as to demand that a motion picture be condensed into a single still.

Alfred Stieglitz

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Alfred Stieglitz
Age: 81 †
Born: 1864
Born: January 1
Died: 1946
Died: January 1
Exhibition Curator
Photographer
Photography Critic
Publisher
Hoboken
New Jersey
Alfred Steiglitz
Demand
Single
Condensed
Stills
Futile
Still
Portrait
Persons
Portraits
Person
Motion
Complete
Picture

More quotes by Alfred Stieglitz

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All art, like all love, is rooted in heartache.
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There is nothing so wrong as accepting a thing merely because men who have done things say it should be so.
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I am not a painter, nor an artist. Therefore I can see straight, and that may be my undoing.
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I was sad to leave Europe in 1890, after my student days in Germany... But then, once back in New York, I experienced an intense longing for Europe, for its vital tradition of music, theatre, art, craftsmanship... I felt bewildered and lonely. How was I to use myself?
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My picture, Fifth Avenue, Winter is the result of a three hours' stand during a fierce snow-storm on February 22nd 1893, awaiting the proper moment. My patience was duly rewarded. Of course, the result contained an element of chance, as I might have stood there for hours without succeeding in getting the desired pictures.
Alfred Stieglitz
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Technically perfect, pictorially rotten. (Stieglitz's standard comment on photographs he rejected for publication in The American Amateur Photographer.)
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Photography is my passion.
Alfred Stieglitz
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All I want is to preserve that wonderful something which so purely exists between us.
Alfred Stieglitz
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My cloud photographs are equivalents of my most profound life experiences, my basic philosophy of life. All art is an equivalent of the artist’s most profound life experiences.
Alfred Stieglitz
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A woman artist could be one of those intuitive geniuses [who] have kept their childlike spirit and have added to it breadth of vision and experience.
Alfred Stieglitz
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We had many books and pictures... my parents' way of life doubtless left a lasting impression on me. They created an atmosphere in which a certain kind of freedom could exist. This may well account for my seeking a related sense of liberty as I grew up.
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A work is not art until enough noise has been made about it and someone rich comes along and buys it.
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In photography there is a reality so subtle that it becomes more real than reality.
Alfred Stieglitz
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Let me here call attention to one of the most universally popular mistakes that have to do with photography - that of classing supposedly excellent work as professional, and using the term amateur to convey the idea of immature productions and to excuse atrociously poor photographs.
Alfred Stieglitz
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The camera was waiting for me by predestination and I took to it as a musician takes to the piano or a painter to canvas. I found that I was master of the elements, that I could work miracles.
Alfred Stieglitz
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When I make a picture, I make love.
Alfred Stieglitz
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The ability to make a truly artistic photograph is not acquired off-hand, but is the result of an artistic instinct coupled with years of labor.
Alfred Stieglitz
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Standing up here on the hill away from all humans - seeing these Wonders taking place before one's eyes - so silently... watching the silence of Nature. No school - no church - is as good a teacher as the eye understandingly seeing what's before it. I believe this more firmly than ever.
Alfred Stieglitz
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The goal of art was the vital expression of self.
Alfred Stieglitz
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For that is the power of the camera: seize the familiar and give it new meanings, a special significance by the mark of a personality.
Alfred Stieglitz