Top 8 Quotes & Sayings by Alvin Langdon Coburn

Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American photographer Alvin Langdon Coburn.
Last updated on December 7, 2024.
Alvin Langdon Coburn

Alvin Langdon Coburn was an early 20th-century photographer who became a key figure in the development of American pictorialism. He became the first major photographer to emphasize the visual potential of elevated viewpoints and later made some of the first completely abstract photographs.

A photographic portrait needs more collaboration between sitter and artist than a painted portrait.
I wish to state emphatically that I do not believe in any sort of handwork or manipulation on a photographic negative or print.
Why should not the camera artist break away from the worn out conventions and claim the freedom of expression which any art must have to be alive. — © Alvin Langdon Coburn
Why should not the camera artist break away from the worn out conventions and claim the freedom of expression which any art must have to be alive.
Photography makes one conscious of beauty everywhere, even in the simplest things, even in what is often considered commonplace or ugly. Yet nothing is really 'ordinary', for every fragment of the world is crowned with wonder and mystery, and a great and surprising beauty.
I affirm that any sort of photograph is superior to any sort of painting aiming at the same result.
My aim in photography is always to convey a mood and not to impart local information. This is not an easy matter, for the camera if left to its own devices will simply impart local information to the exclusiveness of everything else.
It is my hope that photography may fall in line with all the other arts and with her infinite possibilities, do things strange and more fascinating than the most fantastic dreams.
An artist is a man who tries to express the inexpressible.
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