Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.
Ansel AdamsRead
I eagerly await new concepts and processes. I believe that the electronic image will be the next major advance. Such systems will have their own inherent and inescapable structural characteristics, and the artist and functional practitioner will again strive to comprehend and control them.
Interpretation
Ansel Adams emphasizes the transformative potential of electronic imagery in art and expresses excitement about future innovations.
In this quote, Ansel Adams reflects on the inevitable evolution of artistic techniques and technologies. He discusses the arrival of electronic images as a significant advancement, highlighting the challenge for artists and practitioners to understand and master these new tools. This perspective encourages an embracing of change and innovation in creative practices.
In practice
In a presentation about digital art, one might quote Adams to emphasize the importance of embracing new technologies.
Photography is more than a medium for factual communication of ideas. It is a creative art.
It is horrifying that we have to fight our own government to save the environment.
A good photograph is knowing where to stand.
With all art expression, when something is seen, it is a vivid experience, sudden, compelling, and inevitable.
The sheer ease with which we can produce a superficial image often leads to creative disaster.
You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved.
What I am trying to do when I use symbols is to awaken in your unconscious some reaction. I am very conscious of what I am using because symbols can be very dangerous. When we use normal language we can defend ourselves because our society is a linguistic society, a semantic society. But when you start to speak, not with words, but only with images, the people cannot defend themselves.
I loved working when I worked at commercial art and they told you what to do and how to do it and all you had to do was correct it and they'd say yes or no. The hard thing is when you have to dream up the tasteless things to do on your own.
I loved photography and everybody said it was a crazy thing to do because in those days nobody made it into the film business. I mean, unless you were related to somebody there was no way in.
The great work must inevitably be obscure, except to the very few, to those who like the author himself are initiated into the mysteries. Communication then is secondary: it is perpetuation which is important. For this only one good reader is necessary.
The artist invites the spectator to take a journey within the realm of the canvas... Without taking the journey, the spectator has really missed the essential experience of the picture.
If contemporary artists sincerely seek to be original, unique, and new, they should begin by disregarding the notions of originality, individuality, and innovation: they are the cliches of our time.
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