One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind.
Dorothea LangeRead
I had to get my camera to register things that were more important than how poor they were--their pride, their strength, their spirit.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes capturing the true essence and spirit of individuals beyond their material conditions.
Dorothea Lange highlights the importance of photographing people in a way that reveals their dignity and inner strength, rather than focusing solely on their poverty or hardships. Her work aimed to tell a deeper story that reflects the resilience and pride of those she photographed, challenging viewers to see beyond surface appearances and recognize the human spirit.
In practice
This quote can be used in a photography exhibition to illustrate the philosophy behind the artist's work.
One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind.
Being disabled gave me an immense advantage. People are kinder to you. It puts you on a different level than if you go into a situation whole and secure.
Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.
The words that come direct from the people are the greatest.If you substitute one out of your own vocabulary, it disappears before your eyes.
Photographers stop photographing a subject too soon before they have exhausted the possibilities.
You go into a room and you know where you're welcome; you know where you're unwelcome.Sometimes in a hostile situation you stick around because hostility itself is important.The people who are garrulous and wear their heart on their sleeve and tell you everything, that's one kind of person, but the fellow who's hiding behind a tree and hoping you don't see him is the fellow that you'd better find out why.
I don't do fashion, I'm fashion
That's another way of writing a song, of course. Just talking to somebody that ain't there. That's the best way. That's the truest way. Then it just becomes a question of how heroic your speech is. To me, it's something to strive after.
I think I probably would have enjoyed to keep my own private pain out of my work. But I was changed by my audience who said your private pain which you have unwittingly shown us in your early songs is also ours.
...and the lamp having at last resigned itself to death. There was nothing now but firelight in the room, And every time a flame uttered a gasp for breath It flushed her amber skin with the blood of its bloom.
Writers do not live one life, they live two. There is the living and then there is the writing. There is the second tasting, the delayed reaction.
Music is perpetual, and only the hearing is intermittent.
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