Actually, documentary pictures include every subject in the world - good, bad, indifferent. I have yet to see a fine photograph which is not a good document.
Interpretation
Documentary photography captures all aspects of life, and a good photograph serves as a valuable record of its subject.
Berenice Abbott emphasizes that documentary photography is an inclusive medium, capable of representing the full spectrum of human experience, whether positive, negative, or neutral. She suggests that a well-crafted photograph transcends mere imagery to become a significant document, reflecting the realities of its subject matter with authenticity and depth.
In practice
In a photography exhibition showcasing social issues, this quote could be used to emphasize the power of documentary images.
To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it. The photographer creates, evolves a better, a more selective, more acute seeing eye by looking ever more sharply at what is going on in the world.
Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.
Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.
The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.
Photography helps people to see.
Some people are still unaware that reality contains unparalleled beauties. The fantastic and unexpected, the ever-changing and renewing is nowhere so exemplified as in real life itself.
Every grain of experience is food for the greedy growing soul of the artist.
There is a kind of classlessness in the theater. The rehearsal pianist, the head carpenter, the stage manager, the star of the show-all are family.
If it can affect me, if it has meaning to me, if I feel I can do it well, I will do it and record it and thats why I recorded these songs.
Design in art, is a recognition of the relation between various things, various elements in the creative flux. You can't invent a design. You recognize it, in the fourth dimension. That is, with your blood and your bones, as well as with your eyes.
With 'Taxi Driver,' I had this eureka moment. I realized that acting could be much more than what I had been doing. I had to build a character that wasn't me.
He realised, more vividly than ever before, that art had two constant, two unending preoccupations: it is always meditating upon death and it is always thereby creating life.
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