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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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Robert Adams
Age: 87
Born: 1937
Born: May 8
Photographer
Orange
New Jersey
Robert Hickman Adams
Robert ii Adams
Artist
Henry
Art
James
Modest
Three
Appropriate
Doe
Photographer
Trying
Questions
Asking
Worth
Proposed

More quotes by Robert Adams

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The only freedom we've got is not to react to anything, but to turn within and know the truth.
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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History does not unfold: it piles up.
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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Timothy O'Sullivan was, it seems to me, the greatest of the photographers because he understood nature first as architecture.
Robert Adams
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Again the important point to remember is that you should keep asking yourself questions. Do not make statements. Ask questions to yourself. The mind hates that.
Robert Adams
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...I felt that photography ought to start with and remain faithful to the appearance of the world, and in so doing record contradictions. The greatest pictures would then... find wholeness in the torn world.
Robert Adams
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The thing that keeps you scrambling over the rocks, risking snakes, and swatting at the flies is the view. It is only your enjoyment of and commitment to what you see, not to what you rationally understand, that balances the otherwise absurd investment of labor.
Robert Adams
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The experience of life that you and I have is pretty much a jigsaw puzzle in the box: Day-to-day experiences of disconnected pieces that don't seem to justify the efforts we make each day.
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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The secret to peace-of-mind is to not identify with anything other than your true self.
Robert Adams
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The job of the photographer, in my view, is not to catalogue indisputable fact but to try to be coherent about intuition and hope. This is not to say that he is unconcerned with the truth.
Robert Adams
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You are the Self, that perfect immutable Self. Nothing else exists. Nothing else ever existed. Nothing else will ever exist. There is only one Self and you are That. Rejoice!
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
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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 don't have to set aside a time for meditation. You can do it while you're driving your car,while you're at work, while you're playing music. Just be aware of yourself, of who you really are,and realize the rest is a projection of your mind.
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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A lake that is noisy cannot reflect anything
Robert Adams
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Let go of the thoughts, let go of the mind, let go of everything. Let go! Drop it! Drop everything. Hold onto nothing.
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