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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

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Sam Abell
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: February 19
Photographer
Sylvania
Ohio
Fronts
Populate
Front
Compose
Taught
Amateur
Back
Ardent
Photographer
Photograph
Dad
Picture

More quotes by Sam Abell

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My first priority when taking pictures is to achieve clarity. A good documentary photograph transmits the information of the situation with the utmost fidelity achieving it means understanding the nuances of lighting and composition, and also remembering to keep the lenses clean and the cameras steady.
Sam Abell
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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
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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
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I think of myself as a writer who photographs. Images, for me, can be considered poems, short stories or essays. And I've always thought the best place for my photographs was inside books of my own creation.
Sam Abell
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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
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A very big part of the life of a photograph is the afterlife.
Sam Abell
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Photography, alone of the arts, seems perfected to serve the desire humans have for a moment - this very moment - to stay.
Sam Abell
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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
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Photographs that transcend but do not deny their literal situation appeal to me.
Sam Abell
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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
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A mad, keen photographer needs to get out into the world and work and make mistakes.
Sam Abell
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First of all, I appropriate photographs.In presenting the Richard Prince photograph I tried to be as neutral as I could be. I put down the fact of it. I wanted it to be the same thing he wanted it to be, an open ended invitation to think about authorship, and who owns a created work. So I pair it with my appropriated picture.
Sam Abell
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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
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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
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In almost every photograph I have ever made, there is something I would do to complete it. I take that to be the spirit hole or the deliberate mistake that's in a Navajo rug to not be godlike, but to be human.
Sam Abell
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It's more difficult now, to be a Geographic photographer, than it was when I came along. And it wasn't easy at that time.
Sam Abell
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The unusual wins out over the usual.
Sam Abell
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How the visual world appears is important to me. I'm always aware of the light. I'm always aware of what I would call the 'deep composition.' Photography in the field is a process of creation, of thought and technique. But ultimately, it's an act of imaginatively seeing from within yourself.
Sam Abell
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There's a great quote about Virginia Woolf, she had the same spiritual stake in her diaries as she had in her writing.
Sam Abell
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The neatest part of this book I'm working on - to me - are the pictures that show the process... Because photographers... think things through and... it isn't luck, and it isn't random and it isn't accidental. It isn't.
Sam Abell