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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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Sam Abell
Age: 79
Born: 1945
Born: February 19
Photographer
Sylvania
Ohio
Take
Photograph
Made
Complete
Every
Mistake
Navajo
Something
Almost
Godlike
Would
Spirit
Deliberate
Ever
Hole
Human
Holes
Humans
Photographer

More quotes by Sam Abell

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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
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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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Aboriginal Australia is a tough place to work, rough and tough.
Sam Abell
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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
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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.
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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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The unusual wins out over the usual.
Sam Abell
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When assignments were over, photography continued. One of the primary reasons it did was that I wanted and needed to have fresh work. Also, it's very stimulating to be around non-professional photographers. They're the ones with the purest flame burning about their photography. I appreciate that.
Sam Abell
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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
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Though Geographic didn't publish that photo in the story that it was done for, The Life of Charlie Russell, a cowboy artist in Montana. But later, maybe a year and a half ago, they named it one of the 50 greatest pictures ever made at National Geographic.
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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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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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
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As I have practiced it, photography produces pleasure by simplicity. I see something special and show it to the camera. A picture is produced. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs.
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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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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For sheer majestic geography and sublime scale, nothing beats Alaska and the Yukon. For culture, Japan. And for all-around affection, Australia.
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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That's who comes to my workshops. I jokingly tell my students that the class could be called Your photographs: Better.
Sam Abell
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Above all, it's hard learning to live with vivid mental images of scenes I cared for and failed to photograph. It is the edgy existence within me of these unmade images that is the only assurance that the best photographs are yet to be made.
Sam Abell