Nothing came easy. I was just born with a need to explore every part of my mind. And with long searching and hard work, I became devoted to my restlessness.
Gordon ParksRead
I saw that the camera could be a weapon against poverty, against racism, against all sorts of social wrongs. I knew at that point I had to have a camera.
Interpretation
Gordon Parks believed that photography could be a powerful tool for social change.
In this quote, Gordon Parks expresses his realization that the camera is not merely a device for taking pictures, but a potent instrument that can expose and confront social injustices such as poverty and racism. This revelation drove him to pursue photography as a means to document reality and advocate for change, illustrating the profound impact art can have in highlighting societal issues.
In practice
During a speech on social activism, one might use this quote to emphasize the role of art in advocacy.
Nothing came easy. I was just born with a need to explore every part of my mind. And with long searching and hard work, I became devoted to my restlessness.
I suffered evils, but without allowing them to rob me of the freedom to expand.
You know, the camera is not meant just to show misery.
If you don't have anything to say, your photographs aren't going to say much.
The camera could be a very powerful instrument against discrimination, against poverty, against racism.
And I think that after nearly 85 years upon this planet that I have a right after working so hard at showing the desolation and the poverty, to show something beautiful for somebody as well.
Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form, and thus with an independent existence. Its heartwood is calligraphy - the dance, on a tiny stage, of the living, speaking hand - and its roots reach into living soil, though its branches may be hung each year with new machines. So long as the root lives, typography remains a source of true delight, true knowledge, true surprise.
Painting doesn't freeze time. It circulates and recycles time like a wheel that turns. Those who were first might well be last. Painting is a very slow art. It doesn't travel with the speed of light. That's why dead painters shine so bright.
Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism.
The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body.
The stronger the participation of the female characters, the better the movie. They knew that in the old days, when women stars were equally as important as men.
I don't think writers choose the genre, the genre chooses us. I wrote out of the wish to create order out of disorder, the liking of a pattern.
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