I am a professional photographer because it is the best way I know to earn the money I require to take care of my wife and children.
Interpretation
The quote expresses the idea that artistry can be a means to support one's family.
Irving Penn highlights the connection between his profession as a photographer and his responsibility as a provider for his family. Through his craft, he not only pursues his passion for photography but also ensures the financial support needed to raise and take care of his wife and children, emphasizing the role of art as a practical means to fulfill family obligations.
In practice
During a speech at a photography seminar, I could use this quote to highlight the balance between artistry and providing for loved ones.
Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is one they would like to show the world very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe.
I've tried a few times to depart from what I know I can do, and I've failed. I've tried to work outside the studio, but it introduces too many variables that I can't control. I'm really quite narrow, you know.
I can get obsessed by anything if i look at it long enough. That's the curse of being a photographer.
I am just getting into Zora Neale Hurston, who is possibly a much better writer than the critics and rivals who tried to erase her from history, resulting in a life in which she worked as a maid and died in a welfare nursing home. She's clever. She does something modern to the sentence.
I always feel that art in general and acting in particular should make the audience a little uncomfortable, to slap them and wake them up.
I'm very representational some of the time, and a little all of the time. But when you're painting out of your unconscious, figures are bound to emerge.
Who made art history? Not the most reasonable people. The mad men did. If painting is the mirror of a time, it must be mad to have a true image of what that time is. To one madness we oppose another madness.
One of the privileges you have of living the life of an artist and creating your own world and everything is the fact that, in-between times, you can kind of spend them however you want. Because, you know, once you open up your candy store again, you're open for business. And you have to be responsible. You have to be available.
Organic buildings are the strength and lightness of the spiders' spinning, buildings qualified by light, bred by native character to environment, married to the ground.
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