I canβt stand these damn shows on museum walls with neat little frames, where you look at the images as if they were pieces of art. I want them to be pieces of life!
W. Eugene SmithRead
Most photographers seem to operate with a pane of glass between themselves and their subjects. They just can't get inside and know the subject.
Interpretation
Photographers often create a barrier between themselves and their subjects, hindering genuine connection.
W. Eugene Smith's quote highlights the challenge photographers face in truly understanding and connecting with their subjects. It suggests that many photographers may rely too heavily on technical aspects and remain emotionally distant, which prevents them from capturing the essence of who their subjects really are.
In practice
In a presentation about the art of photography, this quote can emphasize the importance of emotional connection.
I canβt stand these damn shows on museum walls with neat little frames, where you look at the images as if they were pieces of art. I want them to be pieces of life!
I've never made any picture, good or bad, without paying for it in emotional turmoil.
Up to and including the moment of exposure, the photographer is working in an undeniably subjective way. By his choice of technical approach, by the selection of the subject matterand by his decision as to the exact cinematic instant of exposure, he is blending the variables of interpretation into an emotional whole.
I try to take what voice I have and I give it to those who donβt have one at all.
The photographer must bear the responsibility for his work and its effect β¦[for] photographic journalism, because of its tremendous audience reached by publications using it, has more influence on public thinking than any other branch of photography.
Many claim I am a photographer of tragedy. In the greater sense I am not, for though I often photograph where the tragic emotion is present, the result is almost invariably affirmative.
Fiction is based on reality unless you're a fairy-tale artist, you have to get your knowledge of life from somewhere. You have to know the material you're writing about before you alter it.
So here I stand before you preaching organic architecture: declaring organic architecture to be the modern ideal and the teaching so much needed if we are to see the whole of life, and to now serve the whole of life, holding no traditions essential to the great TRADITION. Nor cherishing any preconceived form fixing upon us either past, present or future, but-instead-exalting the simple laws of common sense-or of super-sense if you prefer-determining form by way of the nature of materials.
Dill was off again. Beautiful things floated around in his dreamy head. He could read two books to my one, but he preferred the magic of his own inventions. He could add and subtract faster than lightning, but he preferred his own twilight world, a world where babies slept, waiting to be gathered like morning lilies.
In the great glasshouses streaming with condensation, the children in mourning-dress beheld marvels.
Unfortunately, moral beauty in art - like physical beauty in a person - is extremely perishable. It is nowhere so durable as artistic or intellectual beauty. Moral beauty has a tendency to decay very rapidly into sententiousness or untimeliness.
I enjoy wording. Words for me are tangible bodies, visible sirens, incarnate sensualities.
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