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The eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.

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
Photography
Thoughts
Eye
Feelings
Joyous
Traffic
Photographer

More quotes by Walker Evans

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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.
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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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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Good photography is unpretentious.
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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Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.
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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The secret of photography is, the camera takes on the character and personality of the handler.
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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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 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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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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It is the way to educate your eye and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop.
Walker Evans
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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 easy to photograph light reflecting from a surface, the truly hard part is capturing the light in the air.
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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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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Science has rolled its war wagons over the crushed myths of so many religious beliefs. It has marshaled its mechanics to explain the motions of the sun, moon, and stars. It has mapped the heavens, leaving no place for gods to live.
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