« All Photograph Quotes · Roland Barthes's Page
Photograph Quotes by Roland Barthes
- A photograph is always invisible, it is not it that we see.
- The realists do not take the photograph for a 'copy' of reality, but for an emanation of past reality, a magic, not an art.
- The Photograph belongs to that class of laminated objects whose two leaves cannot be separated without destroying them both: the windowpane and the landscape, and…
- Every photograph is a certificate of presence.
- A paradox: the same century invented history and photography. But history is a memory fabricated according to positive formulas, a pure intellectual discourse which abolishes…
- The Winter Photograph was my Ariadne, not because it would help me discover a secret thing (monster or treasure), but because it would tell me…
- One of the marks of our world is perhaps this reversal: we live according to a generalized image-repertoire. Consider the United Sates, where everything is…
- In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like winnicott's psychotic patient,…
- One day, quite some time ago, I happened on a photograph of Napoleon’s youngest brother, Jerome, taken in 1852. And I realized then, with an…
- What the Photograph reproduces to infinity has occurred only once: the Photograph mechanically repeats what could never be repeated existentially.
- It is as if the Photograph always carries its referent with itself, both affected by the same amorous or funereal immobility, at the very heart…
- I want a History of Looking. For the Photograph is the advent of myself as other: a cunning dissociation of consciousness from identity. Even odder:…
- In an initial period, Photography, in order to surprise, photographs the notable; but soon, by a familiar reversal, it decrees notable whatever it photographs. The…
- Ultimately — or at the limit — in order to see a photograph well, it is best to look away or close your eyes. 'The…
- When we define the Photograph as a motionless image, this does not mean only that the figures it represents do not move; it means that…
- For the photograph's immobility is somehow the result of a perverse confusion between two concepts: the Real and the Live: by attesting that the object…
- The photograph is literally an emanation of the referent. From a real body, which was there, proceed radiations which ultimately touch me, who am here;…
- The Photograph is violent: not because it shows violent tings, but because on each occasion (i)it fills the sight by force(i), and because in it…
- Each photograph is read as the private appearance of its referent: the age of Photography corresponds precisely to the explosion of the private into the…
- The Photograph is an extended, loaded evidence — as if it caricatured not the figure of what it represents (quite the converse) but its very…
More Photograph Quotes
- All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth. — Richard Avedon
- Rockers are the nicest people to photograph. They have no inhibitions. — David Bailey
- You have to kind of be invisible when you photograph children, so you use a longer lens. — David Bailey
- Actors are hard to photograph because they never want to reveal who they are. You don't know if you're getting a character… — David Bailey
- I don't see the point of photographing trees or rocks because they're there and anyone can photograph them if they're prepared to… — David Bailey
- You don't take a photograph, you make it. — Ansel Adams
- When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence. — Ansel Adams
- A good photograph is knowing where to stand. — Ansel Adams
- There are no rules for good photographs, there are only good photographs. — Ansel Adams
- A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed. — Ansel Adams
- A true photograph need not be explained, nor can it be contained in words. — Ansel Adams
- Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop. — Ansel Adams