I just do my work, and I work every day, and my ambition is just to do something better than I last did.
Patti SmithRead
Polaroid by its nature makes you frugal. You walk around with maybe two packs of film in your pocket. You have 20 shots, so each shot is a world.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the value of being deliberate and frugal in our choices, especially in art and photography.
Patti Smith's quote reflects on the Polaroid photography experience, emphasizing how the limited number of shots forces the photographer to be thoughtful and intentional with each capture. Each photograph becomes significant as it represents a unique moment or 'world' that deserves careful consideration, thus promoting the idea of valuing experiences over quantity.
Themes
PolaroidPhotographyFrugalityIntentionalityArt
In practice
Example use cases
Using this quote in a photography class to encourage students to be more mindful of their shots.
More from Patti Smith
All quotes βMy small torrent of words dissipated into an elaborate sense of expanding and receding. It was my entrance into the radiance of imagination. This process was especially magnified within the fevers of influenza, measles, chickenpox, and mumps. I got them all and with each I was privileged with a new level of awareness. Lying deep within myself, the symmetry of a snowflake spinning above me, intensifying through my lids, I seized a most worthy souvenir, a shard of heavenβs kaleidoscope.
Patti SmithRead
For everything bad, there's a million really exciting things, whether it's someone puts out a really great book, there's a new movie, there's a new detective, the sky is unbelievably golden, or you have the best cup of coffee you ever had in your life.
Patti SmithRead
Eyeing the traffic circulating the lobby hung with bad art. Big invasive stuff unloaded on Stanley Bard in exchange for rent. The hotel is an energetic, desperate haven for scores of gifted hustling children from every rung of the ladder. Guitar bums and stoned-out beauties in Victorian dresses. Junkie poets, playwrights, broke-down filmmakers, and French actors. Everybody passing through here is somebody, if not in the outside world.
Patti SmithRead
I've always felt outside of things; I've always felt different.
Patti SmithRead
No matter what anybody thinks about any of them, every record I've done has been done with the same amount of care, anguish, pain, suffering, and joy.
Patti SmithRead
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