Quote

My best work is often almost unconscious and occurs ahead of my ability to understand it.

Sam Abell

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Sam Abell
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: February 19
Photographer
Sylvania
Ohio
Best
Unconscious
Work
Photographer
Ahead
Photography
Almost
Ability
Understand
Often
Occurs

More quotes by Sam Abell

Image
I was giving a lecture and I said, that's enough about The Photographic Life, meaning my biography, now let's talk about the life of a photograph. And in that one instant I got the title for a potential next book.
Sam Abell
Image
A very big part of the life of a photograph is the afterlife.
Sam Abell
Image
What I'm interested in is modern American history. I'm taken with the changes that have occurred in America in my lifetime.
Sam Abell
Image
[ My time and our common culture] it's what I'm photographing, and I'm very involved with that.
Sam Abell
Image
For sheer majestic geography and sublime scale, nothing beats Alaska and the Yukon. For culture, Japan. And for all-around affection, Australia.
Sam Abell
Image
My least favorite photographer to have would be myself. Someone who wanted a career at National Geographic. Because it's almost mathematically impossible to achieve that.
Sam Abell
Image
I'm interested in smokers standing on ledges, and big box stores, the rise of the suburbs, and the hollowing out of small towns. Self-storage. Things that didn't exist 50 years ago. Our common culture. What we have agreed is OK to live with.
Sam Abell
Image
When I first went to 'National Geographic,' I thought I was the least qualified person to step through the doors. But because of my parents and the culture of continual learning they imposed on us, I later came to believe I was the most qualified person who ever worked there.
Sam Abell
Image
The class that I teach is called The Life of a Photograph. It takes up the question, of the billion photographs that were taken today, how many will have a life, and why? So the new reality has made the question more pertinent, not less pertinent.
Sam Abell
Image
I wanted life to be episodic. I wanted to be a magazine photographer and I was willing to do what it took to become that.
Sam Abell
Image
My father taught me photography. It was his hobby, and we had a small darkroom in the fruit cellar of our basement. It was the kind of makeshift darkroom that was only dark at night.
Sam Abell
Image
I had a book come out several years ago, when there were no blogs. This is a mark to me about how the environment has changed.
Sam Abell
Image
My dad had been an ardent amateur photographer, and he taught me to compose a photograph from the back to the front, and then populate the picture.
Sam Abell
Image
Teaching has never been far from my life. It's the most natural thing I do. Apparently, as I said, I cannot not do it.
Sam Abell
Image
I think that it's workshops, honestly, that have kept me keen about photography, and about my photography. My career as a workshop photographer came while I was at the Geographic in the late 70's, and has continued consistently since then.
Sam Abell
Image
It matters little how much equipment we use it matters much that we be masters of all we do use.
Sam Abell
Image
There are grander and more sublime landscapes - to me. There are more compelling cultures. But what appeals to me about central Montana is that the combination of landscape and lifestyle is the most compelling I've seen on this earth. Small mountain ranges and open prairie, and different weather, different light, all within a 360-degree view.
Sam Abell
Image
For example, in my dorm, at the University of Kentucky, I had the only camera. I don't think anyone came to college with a camera, other than me.
Sam Abell
Image
The thing with my workshops is, photography is a thoughtful process. In an atmosphere of fast photography, and generally thoughtless, quick, automatic photography, I think that there is an interest in the slowed down, thoughtful approach.
Sam Abell
Image
My parents, grandmother and brother were teachers. My mother taught Latin and French and was the school librarian. My father taught geography and a popular class called Family Living, the precursor to Sociology, which he eventually taught. My grandmother was a beloved one-room school teacher at Knob School, near Sonora in Larue County, Ky.
Sam Abell