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I used to try to figure out precisely what I was seeing all the time, until I discovered that I didn't need to. If the thing is true, why there it is.

Walker Evans

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Walker Evans
Age: 71 †
Born: 1903
Born: November 3
Died: 1975
Died: April 10
Journalist
Photographer
Photojournalist
St. Louis
Missouri
Time
Seeing
True
Didn
Precisely
Used
Discovered
Need
Photographer
Needs
Figure
Thing
Photography
Trying
Figures

More quotes by Walker Evans

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Detachment, lack of sentimentality, originality, a lot of things that sound rather empty. I know what they mean. Let's say, visual impact may not mean much to anybody. I could point it out though. I mean it's a quality that something has or does not have. Coherence. Well, some things are weak, some things are strong.
Walker Evans
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It is easy to imagine fantasy as physical and myth as real. We do it almost every moment. We do this as we dream, as we think, and as we cope with the world about us. But these worlds of fantasy that we form into the solid things around us are the source of our discontent. They inspire our search to find ourselves.
Walker Evans
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Nobody should touch a Polaroid [camera] until he's over sixty
Walker Evans
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Leaving aside the mysteries and the inequities of human talent, brains, taste, and reputations, the matter of art in photography may come down to this: it is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing it is the defining of observation full and felt.
Walker Evans
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I wanted so much to write that I couldn't write a word.
Walker Evans
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The eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.
Walker Evans
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... nature photographs downright bore me for some reason or other. I think: 'Oh, yes. Look at that sand dune. What of it?'
Walker Evans
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I say half jokingly that photography is the most difficult of the arts. It does require a certain arrogance to see and to choose. I feel myself walking on a tightrope instead of on the ground.
Walker Evans
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What I believe is really good in the so-called documentary approach to photography is the addition of lyricism.[this quality] is usually produced unconsciously and even unintentionally and accidentally by the cameraman.
Walker Evans
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Photography is not cute cats, nor nudes, motherhood or arrangements of manufactured products. Under no circumstances it is anything ever anywhere near a beach.
Walker Evans
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You see, a document has use, whereas art is really useless. Therefore art is never a document, although it can adopt that style.
Walker Evans
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It is the way to educate your eye and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop.
Walker Evans
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Color tends to corrupt photography and absolute color corrupts it absolutely. Consider the way color film usually renders blue sky, green foliage, lipstick red, and the kiddies' playsuit. These are four simple words which must be whispered: color photography is vulgar.
Walker Evans
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What America needs is a political revolution.
Walker Evans
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Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.
Walker Evans
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I work rather blindly. I have a theory that seems to work with me that some of the best things you ever do sort of come through you. You don't know where you get the impetus and response to what's before your eyes.
Walker Evans
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The meaning of quality in photography's best pictures lies written in the language of vision. That language is learned by chance, not system.
Walker Evans
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I do note that photography, a despised medium to work in, is full of empty phonies and worthless commercial people. That presents quite a challenge to the man who can take delight in being in a very difficult, disdained medium.
Walker Evans
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Do we know what we look like? Not really.
Walker Evans
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That’s my idea of what a portrait ought to be, anonymous and documentary and a straightforward picture of mankind.
Walker Evans