Quote

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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Walker Evans
Age: 71 †
Born: 1903
Born: November 3
Died: 1975
Died: April 10
Journalist
Photographer
Photojournalist
St. Louis
Missouri
Must
Green
Tends
Kiddies
Way
Blue
Absolutes
Foliage
Usually
Absolute
Corrupts
Color
Red
Renders
Four
Sky
Lipstick
Simple
Consider
Whispered
Words
Absolutely
Corrupt
Film
Photography
Vulgar

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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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Do we know what we look like? Not really.
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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 secret of photography is, the camera takes on the character and personality of the handler.
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It is the way to educate your eye and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop.
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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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I wanted so much to write that I couldn't write a word.
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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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Photography is not cute cats, nor nudes, motherhood or arrangements of manufactured products. Under no circumstances it is anything ever anywhere near a beach.
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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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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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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.
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What America needs is a political revolution.
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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.
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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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Whether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.
Walker Evans