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Technically perfect, pictorially rotten. (Stieglitz's standard comment on photographs he rejected for publication in The American Amateur Photographer.)

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
Photographer
Amateur
Photograph
Technically
Standards
Publication
American
Rotten
Perfect
Photographs
Rejected
Comment
Standard

More quotes by Alfred Stieglitz

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I do not object to retouching, dodging or accentuation as long as they do not interfere with the natural qualities of photographic technique.
Alfred Stieglitz
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I detest tradition for tradition's sake the half-alive that which is not real. I feel no hatred of individuals, but of customs, traditions superstitions that go against life, against truth, against the reality of experience, against the spontaneous living out of the sense of wonder-of fresh experience, freshly seen and communicated.
Alfred Stieglitz
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Everything is relative except relatives, and they are absolute.
Alfred Stieglitz
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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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Wherever there is light, one can photograph.
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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Photography my passion, the search for truth, my obsession.
Alfred Stieglitz
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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?
Alfred Stieglitz
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I have all but killed myself for Photography. My passion for it is greater than ever. It's forty years that I have fought its fight... I am not fighting to make a 'name' for myself. Maybe you have some feeling for what the fight is for. It's a world's fight... All that's born of spirit seems mad in these days of materialism run riot.
Alfred Stieglitz
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The arts equally have distinct departments, and unless photography has its own possibilities of expression, separate from those of the other arts, it is merely a process, not an art.
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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All I want is to preserve that wonderful something which so purely exists between us.
Alfred Stieglitz
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Photographers must learn not to be ashamed to have their photographs look like photographs.
Alfred Stieglitz
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As a matter of fact, nearly all the greatest work is being, and has always been done, by those who are following photography for the love of it, and not merely for financial reasons. As the name implies, an amateur is one who works for love.
Alfred Stieglitz
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Several people feel I have photographed God. May be.
Alfred Stieglitz
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I am not a painter, nor an artist. Therefore I can see straight, and that may be my undoing.
Alfred Stieglitz
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The fight for photography became my life.
Alfred Stieglitz
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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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Before the people at large, and for that matter, the artists themselves, understand what photography really means, as I understand that term, it is essential for them to be taught the real meaning of art.
Alfred Stieglitz
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There are many schools of painting. Why should there not be many schools of photographic art? There is hardly a right and a wrong in these matters, but there is truth, and that should form the basis of all works of art.
Alfred Stieglitz