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We cannot empty the mind by thinking. Only by observation.

Robert Adams

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Robert Adams
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: May 8
Photographer
Orange
New Jersey
Robert Hickman Adams
Robert ii Adams
Observation
Empty
Cannot
Mind
Thinking

More quotes by Robert Adams

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Many have asked, pointing incredulously toward a sweep of tract homes and billboards, why picture that? The question sounds simple, but it implies a difficult issue - why open our eyes anywhere but in undamaged places like national parks?
Robert Adams
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Part of the reason that these attempts at explanation fail, I think, is that photographers, like all artists, choose their medium because it allows them the most fully truthful expression of their vision... as Robert Frost told a person who asked him what one of his poems meant, 'You want me to say it worse?'
Robert Adams
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The history of art is filled with people who did not live long enough to enjoy a sympathetic public, and their misery argues that criticism should try to speed justice.
Robert Adams
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Always remember deep in your heart that all is well and everything is unfolding as it should. There are no mistakes anywhere, at any time. What appears to be wrong is simply your own false imagination. That's all.
Robert Adams
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Your own photography is never enough. Every photographer who has lasted has depended on other peoples pictures too - photographs that may be public or private, serious or funny, but that carry with them a reminder of community.
Robert Adams
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Never try to stop the thoughts. If you try to stop the thoughts they will become bigger and greater and they will win. Because the mind appears to be very powerful. Yet in reality the mind does not exist. There is no mind. There is no such thing as a mind. So when you sit in the silence you observe, you watch, you become the witness.
Robert Adams
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There is only one decision you need to make: You are either working at your Freedom or you are accepting your bondage.
Robert Adams
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A lake that is noisy cannot reflect anything
Robert Adams
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The secret to peace-of-mind is to not identify with anything other than your true self.
Robert Adams
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If I like many photographers, and I do, I account for this by noting a quality they share - animation. They may or may not make a living by photography, but they are alive by it.
Robert Adams
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You've always been free. You've always been bright and shining. Everything else is just nonsense.
Robert Adams
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Henry James proposed asking of art three modest and appropriate questions: What is the artist trying to do? Does he do it? Was it worth doing?
Robert Adams
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I have asked students at the beginning of their careers, what things of that sort might haunt them – what things they must photograph, things they have to try to shoot even before they master the intricacies of making dye transfer prints.
Robert Adams
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Of all the sacred places on the coast, none is more comforting than where rivers join the sea. By the river's disappearance we are reminded of life's passing, while by the ocean's beauty we accept it, in a hope we cannot explain.
Robert Adams
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Only when you can understand yourself as All Pervading Consciousness can you possibly understand that all the universe is an emanation of your mind. Everything that you see comes out of you.
Robert Adams
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You are before being and not being, awake and dream take place in time. You have no time.
Robert Adams
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Within You is the Light of a Thousand Suns. - Within You is Unimaginable Beauty.
Robert Adams
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. . .art is a discovery of harmony, a vision of disparities reconciled, or shape beneath confusion.
Robert Adams
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Are there grounds now and then for an unironic smile?
Robert Adams
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All land, no matter what has happened to it, has over it a grace, an absolutely persistent beauty.
Robert Adams