Quote

Photography is a craft. Anyone can learn a craft with normal intelligence and application. To take it beyond the craft is something else. That's when magic comes in. And I don't know that there's any explanation for that.

Elliott Erwitt

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Elliott Erwitt
Age: 96
Born: 1928
Born: July 26
Film Director
Journalist
Photographer
Photojournalist
Paris
France
André S. Solidor
Elio Romano Ervitz
Andre S. Solidor
Elliot Erwitt
Magic
Craft
Beyond
Application
Anyone
Crafts
Learn
Explanation
Comes
Photographer
Else
Intelligence
Take
Photography
Something
Normal

More quotes by Elliott Erwitt

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Most photographers work best alone, myself included.
Elliott Erwitt
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You can find pictures anywhere. It's simply a matter of noticing things and organizing them.
Elliott Erwitt
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Be sure to take the lens cap off before photographing.
Elliott Erwitt
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The main thing is to study pictures and stop listening to the pontifictaions of photographers. Photographers aren't oracles of wisdom. If they're good photographers, then take a good look at their pictures - what else do you need?
Elliott Erwitt
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Nothing happens when you sit at home. I always make it a point to carry a camera with me at all times...I just shoot at what interests me at that moment.
Elliott Erwitt
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As a professional photographer I take photographs for other people to see - but I want them to see what I see. So I never assume that only a few people will appreciate what I do. At all times, the public should be able to understand what I've done, even if they don't understand how I've done it.
Elliott Erwitt
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Somehow Photoshop and the ease with which one can produce an image has degraded the quality of photography in general.
Elliott Erwitt
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It's about reacting to what you see, hopefully without preconception. You can find pictures anywhere. It's simply a matter of noticing things and organising them. You just have to care about what's around you and have a concern with humanity and the human comedy.
Elliott Erwitt
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I've been around so long, most editors think I'm dead.
Elliott Erwitt
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Everybody's got to do something... I'd been on my own since an early age and I thought I better find something to do to buy biscuits and stuff. From high school onwards I was earning my way with photography, one way or another, working in darkrooms and taking pictures of weddings, neighbors' children and so on.
Elliott Erwitt
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I'm almost violent about that stuff - electronic manipulation of pictures. I think it's an abomination. I reject it all. I mean, it's OK for selling corn flakes or automobiles or for taking pimples out of Elizabeth Taylor's face, but it undermines the thing that photography is about, which is about observation and not about manipulation of images.
Elliott Erwitt
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To me, photography is an art of observation. It's about finding something interesting in an ordinary place... I've found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them.
Elliott Erwitt
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It's about time we started to take photography seriously and treat it as a hobby.
Elliott Erwitt
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Covering a historic event is perfectly legitimate. It's not sneaking into somebody's boudoir... These people belong to history, and not to record that if you have the opportunity would be wrong.
Elliott Erwitt
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In those simpler days, you could just take pictures of movie stars and show them the way they were, as normal human beings. And if I felt part of any movement at the time, it was just to do that - to be journalistic and photograph what is, rather than what is made up.
Elliott Erwitt
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When I get up in the morning I brush my teeth and go about my business, and if I am going anywhere interesting I take my camera along.
Elliott Erwitt
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Now very often events are set up for photographers... The weddings are orchestrated about the photographers taking the picture, because if it hasn't been photographed it doesn't really exist.
Elliott Erwitt
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The thing is that when you don't carry a camera, that's when you see pictures in particular, or at least that's when you think you see pictures in particular. When you do carry it, if you do see one on the occasion that you do, you can take it.
Elliott Erwitt
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You don't study photography. You do it.
Elliott Erwitt
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Photography is pretty simple stuff. You just react to what you see, and take many, many pictures.
Elliott Erwitt