Quote

Let us first say what photography is not. A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. It is not just a pretty picture, not an exercise in contortionist techniques and sheer print quality. It is or should be a significant document, a penetrating statement, which can be described in a very simple term-selectivity.

Berenice Abbott

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Berenice Abbott
Age: 93 †
Born: 1898
Born: July 17
Died: 1991
Died: December 9
Architectural Photographer
Photographer
Springfield
Ohio
Berenice Abbot
Bernice Abbott
B. A.
Berenice Alice Abbott
Quality
Significant
Documents
Term
Photograph
Statement
Picture
Sheer
Simple
Photography
Print
Penetrating
Firsts
Dance
Poem
Document
First
Exercise
Statements
Symphony
Painting
Technique
Techniques
Pretty
Photographer
Described

More quotes by Berenice Abbott

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Photography was the medium preeminently qualified to unite art with science. Photography was born in the years which ushered in the scientific age, an offspring of both science and art.
Berenice Abbott
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The photographer is the contemporary being par excellence through his eyes the now becomes the past.
Berenice Abbott
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What the human eye observes casually and incuriously, the eye of the camera (the lens) notes with relentless fidelity.
Berenice Abbott
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I believe there is no more creative medium than photography to recreate the living world of our time. Photography gladly accepts the challenge because it is at home in its element: namely, realism - real life - the now.
Berenice Abbott
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If a medium is representational by nature of the realistic image formed by a lens, I see no reason why we should stand on our heads to distort that function. On the contrary, we should take hold of that very quality, make use of it, and explore it to the fullest.
Berenice Abbott
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I agree that all good photographs are documents, but I also know that all documents are certainly not good photographs. Furthermore, a good photographer does not merely document, he probes the subject, he 'uncovers' it.
Berenice Abbott
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What to me is anathema - a corpse-like, outmoded hangover - is for photography to be a bad excuse for another medium. ... Is not photography good enough in itself, that it must be made to look like something else, supposedly superior?
Berenice Abbott
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Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself.
Berenice Abbott
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You scientists are the worst photographers in the world and you need the best photographers in the world and I'm the one to do it.
Berenice Abbott
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Abstraction in photography is ridiculous, and is only an imitation of painting. We stopped imitating painters a hundred years ago, so to imitate them in this day and age is laughable.
Berenice Abbott
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Photography helps people to see.
Berenice Abbott
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The art is in selecting what is worthwhile to take the trouble about.
Berenice Abbott
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The more you do, the more you realize there is to do, what a vast object the metropolis is, and how the work of photographing could go on forever.
Berenice Abbott
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I have yet to see a fine photograph which is not a good document.
Berenice Abbott
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Today we are confronted with reality on the vastest scale mankind has known and this puts a greater responsibility on the photographer.
Berenice Abbott
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What we need of equipment is this: let it possess as good a structure as the real-life content that surrounds us. We need more simplifications to free us for seeing.
Berenice Abbott
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I think the important decision for a photographer is to choose a subject that intensely interests him or her.
Berenice Abbott
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The photograph may be presented as finely and artistically as you will but to merit serious consideration, must be directly connected with the world we live in.
Berenice Abbott
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Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone it has to be itself.
Berenice Abbott
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To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it. The photographer creates, evolves a better, a more selective, more acute seeing eye by looking ever more sharply at what is going on in the world.
Berenice Abbott