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Photography Quotes by Chuck Close

48 Photography quotes by Chuck Close

All Photography quotes Chuck Close’s page

A camera can be easy to pick up, but finding a personal vision is hard. He says waiting for inspiration rarely works; instead, work itself becomes salvation, like raking gravel in a Zen garden. When things get too easy, the artist is in trouble, because ease can kill creativity.

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I don't work with inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work.

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Painting is the frozen evidence of a performance.

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From my point of view, photography never got any better than it was in 1840.

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I build a painting by putting little marks together-some look like hot dogs, some like doughnuts.

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Ease is the enemy of the artist. When things get too easy, you're in trouble.

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It's always a pleasure to talk about someone else's work.

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All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself.

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If it looks like art, chances are it's somebody else's art.

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Part of the joy of looking at art is getting in sync in some ways with the decision-making process that the artist…

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I knew from the age of five what I wanted to do. The one thing I could do was draw. I couldn't…

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I'm very interested in how we read things, especially the link between seeing two-dimensional and three-dimensional images, because of how I read.

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Inspiration is highly overrated. If you sit around and wait for the clouds to part, it's not liable to ever happen. More…

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The thing that interests me about photography, and why it's different from all other media, is that it's the only medium in…

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The reason I don't like realist, photorealist, neorealist, or whatever, is that I am as interested in the artificial as I am…

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I have no intention of flattering people. I like wrinkles and crow's feet and flaws, and somebody should know, if I'm going…

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I am going for a level of perfection that is only mine... Most of the pleasure is in getting the last little…

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Once I started working with the Polaroid, I would take a shot and if that shot was good, then I'd move the…

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Photography is the easiest medium with which to be merely competent. Almost anybody can be competent. It's the hardest medium in which…

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It always amazes me that just when I think there's nothing left to do in photography and that all permutations and possibilities…

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There are so many artists that are dyslexic or learning disabled, it's just phenomenal. There's also an unbelievably high proportion of artists…

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In life you can be dealt a winning hand of cards and you can find a way to lose, and you can…

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Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and…

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The camera is objective. When it records a face it can't make any hierarchical decisions about a nose being more important than…

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A face is a road map of someone's life. Without any need to amplify that or draw attention to it, there's a…

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See, I think our whole society is much too problem-solving oriented. It is far more interesting to participate in 'problem creation'... You…

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Sometimes I really want to paint somebody and I don't get a photograph that I want to work from.

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I have always attempted to create images that deliver the maximum amount of information about the subject.

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What difference does it make whether you're looking at a photograph or looking at a still life in front of you? You…

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I can't always reach the image in my mind... almost never, in fact... so that the abstract image I create is not…

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Painting is a lie. It's the most magic of all media, the most transcendent. It makes space where there is no space.

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A photograph doesn't gain weight or lose weight, or change from being happy to being sad. It's frozen. You can use it,…

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In my art, I deconstruct and then I reconstruct, so visual perception is one of my primary interests.

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It's like a magic well. You think you know everything about [a] photograph, you think you've gotten everything out of it, and…

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Most people are good at too many things. And when you say someone is focused, more often than not what you actually…

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I never said the camera was truth. It is, however, a more accurate and more objective way of seeing.

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You don't have to reinvent the wheel every day. Today you will do what you did yesterday, and tomorrow you will do…

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It doesn't upset artists to find out that artists used lenses or mirrors or other aids, but it certainly does upset the…

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The first thing I do is take Polaroids of the sitter - 10 or 12 color Polaroids and eight or 10 black-and whites.

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There's something Zen-like about the way I work - it's like raking gravel in a Zen Buddhist garden.

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I think I was driven to paint portraits to commit images of friends and family to memory. I have face blindness, and…

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More by Chuck Close

While photography is the easiest medium in which to be competent, it is the hardest in which to develop an idiosyncratic personal vision.

Never let anyone define what you are capable of by using parameters that don’t apply to you.

Inspiration is highly overrated. If you sit around and wait for the clouds to part, it's not liable to ever happen. More often than…

There's something Zen-like about the way I work - it's like raking gravel in a Zen Buddhist garden.

After a few days in hospital, I was thinking, Oh, gee - I raised in a church, Protestant upbringing which I'd rejected as an…

Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see…

Every child should have a chance to feel special.

It's always a pleasure to talk about someone else's work.

I absolutely hate technology, and I'm computer illiterate, and I never use any labor-saving devices although I'm not convinced that a computer is a…

In the 7th grade, I made a 20-foot long mural of the Lewis and Clark Trail while we were studying that in history because…

Ease is the enemy of the artist. When things get too easy, you're in trouble.

I'm very learning-disabled, and I think it drove me to what I'm doing.

If it looks like art, chances are it's somebody else's art.

Paintings can make you cry and it's just **colored dirt**.

You don't have to reinvent the wheel every day. Today you will do what you did yesterday, and tomorrow you will do what you…