Quote

The difference between the casual impression and the intensified image is about as great as that separating the average business letter from a poem. If you choose your subject selectively—intuitively—the camera can write poetry.

Harry Callahan

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Harry Callahan
Age: 86 †
Born: 1912
Born: October 22
Died: 1999
Died: March 15
Photographer
University Teacher
Detroit
Michigan
Harry M. Callahan
Harry Morey Callahan
Poetry
Camera
Choose
Impression
Selectively
Difference
Cameras
Intensified
Differences
Letters
Intuitively
Business
Image
Separating
Write
Subject
Casual
Great
Average
Letter
Writing
Subjects
Poem

More quotes by Harry Callahan

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You only do exercises in art school. That's not the real thing. A little bit tells you so much. You have to find your own self. And you don't know what you are! But that's what you have to search for.
Harry Callahan
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It takes me a long time to change. I don't think you can just go out and figure out a bunch of visual ideas and photograph. The change happens in living and not through thinking.
Harry Callahan
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You're a legend in your own mind.
Harry Callahan
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I love art because it doesn't have rules like baseball. The only rule is to be good. That's the toughest thing to do.
Harry Callahan
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A picture is like a prayer you're offering a prayer to get something, and in a sense it's like a gift of God because you have practically no control-at least I don't.
Harry Callahan
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The photographs that excite me are photographs that say something in a new manner not for the sake of being different but ones that are different because the individual is different and the individual expresses himself.
Harry Callahan
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Every time I talked about making a picture I didn't do it. I had already done it - talking about it! I quit talking.
Harry Callahan
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I think I came alive when I started photography.
Harry Callahan
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I guess I've shot about 40,000 negatives and of these I have about 800 pictures I like.
Harry Callahan
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I can tell you for me it goes on forever. There are some things you can't ever find out. You can't find out in one life either.
Harry Callahan
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Opinions are like assholes, everbody's got one.
Harry Callahan
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I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.
Harry Callahan
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A man's got to know his limitations.
Harry Callahan
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I like the simple things. I don't know why. I'm that way. I came from a simple place.
Harry Callahan
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I wish more people felt that photography was an adventure the same as life itself and felt that their individual feelings were worth expressing. To me, that makes photography more exciting.
Harry Callahan
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I realize that we all do express ourselves, but those who express that which is always being done are those whose thinking is almost in every way in accord with everyone else. Expression on this basis has become dull to those who wish to think for themselves.
Harry Callahan
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Photography is an adventure just as life is an adventure. If man wishes to express himself photographically, he must understand, surely to a certain extent, his relationship to life.
Harry Callahan
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Photography is an adventure just as life is an adventure.
Harry Callahan
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I photograph continuously, often without a good idea or strong feelings. During this time the photos are nearly all poor, but I believe they develop my seeing and help later on in other photos. I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.
Harry Callahan