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
You know, the camera is not meant just to show misery.
Interpretation
Gordon Parks emphasizes the power of photography to capture more than just suffering; it can also highlight beauty and resilience.
This quote by Gordon Parks underscores the idea that the role of the camera extends beyond documenting hardship; it serves as a tool for storytelling that can celebrate humanity, culture, and the multifaceted nature of life. Parks, a renowned photographer and filmmaker, believed in the potential of images to reflect both struggles and triumphs, urging viewers to see the broader spectrum of existence through the lens.
In practice
This quote can be used in a photography exhibit to emphasize the duality of images.
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.
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.
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.
It is a great difficulty and a great necessity to have to start with the smallest.
Architecture is one of the art forms best able to improve and revitalise cities both artistically and functionally.
To be a photographer, one must photograph. No amount of book learning, no checklist of seminars attended, can substitute for the simple act of making pictures.
Writing is simply something you must do. It's rather like virtue in that it is its own reward.
I’m very worried about the depiction of women on the screen. It’s gotten worse than ever and it’s related to their being either high- or low-class concubines, and the only question is when or where they will go to bed, with whom, and how many. There’s nothing to do with the dreams of women, or of woman as the dream, nothing to do with the quirky part of her, the wonder of her.
A writer is dreamed and transfigured into being by spells, wishes, goldfish, silhouettes of trees, boxes of fairy tales dropped in the mud, uncles' and cousins' books, tablets and capsules and powders...and then one day you find yourself leaning here, writing on that round glass table salvaged from the Park View Pharmacy--writing this, an impossibility, a summary of who you came to be where you are now, and where, God knows, is that?
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