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I'm sometimes called a 'documentary photographer' but... a man operating under that definition could take a sly pleasure in the disguise. Very often I'm doing one thing when I'm thought to be doing another.

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
Often
Documentaries
Another
Disguise
Thought
Definition
Take
Definitions
Sometimes
Photographer
Thing
Photography
Sly
Men
Called
Documentary
Pleasure
Operating

More quotes by Walker Evans

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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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It is the way to educate your eye and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop.
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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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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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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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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In order to put meaning back into our lives, we should recognize illusions for what they are, and we should reach out and touch the fabric of reality.
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
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Do we know what we look like? Not really.
Walker Evans
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Privilege, if you're very strict, is an immoral and unjust thing to have, but if you've got it you didn't choose to get it and you might as well use it. You're privileged to be at Yale, but you know you're under an obligation to repay what's been put into you.
Walker Evans
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The eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.
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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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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It's too presumptuous and naïve to think you can change society by a photograph or anything else... I equate that with propaganda I think that's a lower rank of purpose.
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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Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.
Walker Evans
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Many photographers are apt to confuse color with noise, and to congratulate themselves when they have almost blown you down with screeching hues alone-a bebop of electric blues, furious reds, and poison greens.
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 never took it upon myself to change the world. And those contemporaries of mine who were going around falling for the idea that they were going to bring down the United States government and make a new world were just asses to me.
Walker Evans
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I wanted so much to write that I couldn't write a word.
Walker Evans