Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of direction and perspective in photography and life.
Berenice Abbott highlights the necessity of having a clear direction in one's creative endeavors. A photographer, akin to any artist, must cultivate their vision by observing the world profoundly and thoughtfully, evolving their understanding and appreciation of the subjects they capture. This process of developing an acute eye is not just technical; it is deeply philosophical, reflecting how one's mindset and intentions influence the way art and reality are perceived.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
During a photography workshop, I shared this quote to inspire participants to think critically about their subjects.
More from Berenice Abbott
All quotes →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.
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.
Similar quotes
It's funny, but certain faces seem to go in and out of style. You look at old photographs and everybody has a certain look to them, almost as if they're related. Look at pictures from ten years later and you can see that there's a new kind of face starting to predominate, and that the old faces are fading away and vanishing, never to be seen again.
There is poetry even in prose, in all the great prose which is not merely utilitarian or didactic: there exist poets who write in prose or at least in more or less apparent prose; millions of poets write verses which have no connection with poetry.
Anyway I feel myself a bit on the edge on the art world, but I don't mind, I'm just pursuing my work in a very excited way. And there isn't really a mainstream anymore, is there?
Coincidences always happen if you keep your mind open, while storyboards remain the instruments of cowards who do not trust in their own imagination and who are slaves of a matrix If you get used to planning your shots based solely on aesthetics, you are never that far from kitsch.
Night came walking through Egypt swishing her black dress.
I do - very specifically, I remember Bessie Smith; I used to collect 78 records that I would buy from the St Vincent de Paul store at five cents apiece, and I did this indiscriminately. I would just take whatever was there. And I listened to Patti Page and Walter Huston, 'September Song.'