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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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Walker Evans
Age: 71 †
Born: 1903
Born: November 3
Died: 1975
Died: April 10
Journalist
Photographer
Photojournalist
St. Louis
Missouri
Order
Illusions
Reality
Fabric
Back
Recognize
Illusion
Touch
Reach
Meaning
Lives

More quotes by Walker Evans

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Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.
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What America needs is a political revolution.
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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.
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The secret of photography is, the camera takes on the character and personality of the handler.
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The eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.
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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.
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It is the way to educate your eye and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop.
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It's easy to photograph light reflecting from a surface, the truly hard part is capturing the light in the air.
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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.
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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.
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Do we know what we look like? Not really.
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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.
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Good photography is unpretentious.
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Somewhere in our search for reality we have passed something by, something important that we no longer find amid the bits and pieces of disassembled matter-something vital that we cannot build out of these parts. There is surely something else, some piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and that owes no homage to the sun.
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Documentary: That’s a sophisticated and misleading word. And not really clear… The term should be documentary style… You see, a document has use, whereas art is really useless.
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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... nature photographs downright bore me for some reason or other. I think: 'Oh, yes. Look at that sand dune. What of it?'
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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.
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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