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Photograph Quotes by Susan Sontag
- ...to photograph is to frame, and to frame is to exclude.
- A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly…
- While a painting, even one that meets photographic standards of resemblance, is never more than the stating of an interpretation, a photograph is never less…
- Photographs are perhaps the most mysterious of all the objects that make up, and thicken, the environment we recognize as modern. Photographs really are experience…
- To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge-and therefore, like…
- Photographs objectify: they turn an event or a person into something that can be possessed.
- In contrast to the written account-which, depending on its complexity of thought, reference, and vocabulary, is pitched at a larger or smaller readership-a photograph has…
- Photographs trade simultaneously on the prestige of art and the magic of the real.
- Industrial societies turn their citizens into image-junkies; it is the most irresistible form of mental pollution. Poignant longings for beauty, for an end to probing…
- The photographer's intentions do not determine the meaning of a photograph, which will have its own career, blown by the whims and loyalties of the…
- Finally, the most grandiose result of the photographic enterprise is to give us the sense that we can hold the whole world in our heads…
- A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing happened. The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists, or…
- Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the…
- Any photograph has multiple meanings: indeed, to see something in the form of a photograph is to encounter a potential object of fascination. The ultimate…
- Instead of just recording reality, photographs have become the norm for the way things appear to us, thereby changing the very idea of reality and…
- Because each photograph is only a fragment, its moral and emotional weight depends on where it is inserted. A photograph changes according to the context…
- Knowing a great deal about what is in the world art, catastrophe, the beauties of nature through photographic images, people are frequently disappointed, surprised, unmoved…
- Photographs furnish evidence. Something we hear about, but doubt, seems proven when we're shown a photograph of it.
- The photograph is like a quotation, or a maxim or proverb. Each of us mentally stocks hundreds of photographs, subject to instant recall.
- Photographs shock insofar as they show something novel.
- Photographs may be more memorable than moving images, because they are a neat slice of time, not a flow. Each still photograph is a privileged…
- To photograph people is to violate them, by seeing them as they never see themselves, by having knowledge of them that they can never have...
- It is a nostalgic time right now, and photographs actively promote nostalgia. Photography is an elegiac art, a twilight art. Most subjects photographed are, just…
- A photograph comes into being, as it is seen, all at once.
- To collect photographs is to collect the world.
More Ways to Read Photograph Quotes by Susan Sontag
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