A Quote by Dennis Oppenheim

The photograph gives constant reference to the rectangle. This forces any idea into the confines of pictorial illusionism. — © Dennis Oppenheim
The photograph gives constant reference to the rectangle. This forces any idea into the confines of pictorial illusionism.
I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles.
One night I had an idea while I was at the movies: to photograph the film itself. I tried to imagine photographing an entire feature film with my camera. I could already picture the projection screen making itself visible as a white rectangle. In my imagination, this would appear as a glowing, white rectangle; it would come forward from the projection surface and illuminate the entire theater. This idea struck me as being very interesting, mysterious, and even religious.
The idea of having to make constant reference to politics is anathema to my calling as a writer.
My family, in a way, gives me a reference as to who I am as an individual, and my work gives me a reference as to who I am as a Homo sapiens. I think that's a very perfect match, in my view.
Often the tension that exists between the pictorial content of a photograph and its record of reality is the picture's true beauty.
The subject gives you the best idea of how to make a photograph. So I just wait for something to happen.
So on my screenplay, on the left-hand side of the page, I will put all the ideas that refer to the scene next to it so I have some sort of pictorial reference.
Look at the things around you, the immediate world around you. If you are alive, it will mean something to you, and if you care enough about photography, and if you know how to use it, you will want to photograph that meaningness. If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own, you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph.
Pictures are the idea in visual or pictorial form; and the idea has to be legible, both in the individual picture and in the collective context - which presupposes, of course, that words are used to convey information about the idea and the context. However, none of this means that pictures function as illustrations of an idea: ultimately, they are the idea. Nor is the verbal formulation of the idea a translation of the visual: it simply bears a certain resemblance to the meaning of the idea. It is an interpretation, literally a reflection.
If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own, you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph.
The photograph is not only a pictorial report; it is also a psychological report. It represents the feelings and point of view of the intelligence behind the camera.
When you are a part of a world that is within an enclosed system, the biggest threat is that the loss of contact with any voice from the outside - a point of reference that is different from you - becomes habitual. The loss of this reference makes the enclosed system seem perfect. I can still feel this kind of threat today, the voice that gives legitimacy to various kinds of enclosure.
Above all, I craved to seize the whole essence, in the confines of one single photograph, of some situation that was in the process of unrolling itself before my eyes.
The grass he walked through was new and a sweet smell clung to his clothes. There was blue dye on his hands from the wild irises... that the color of the sky was a shade that could never be replicated in any photograph, just as Heaven could never be seen from the confines of Earth.
The fact is that the camera is literal if anything, which gives it something in common with a thermometer... Often the tension that exists between the pictorial content of a photograph and its record of reality is the picture's true beauty. There is sleight of hand in photography... you make the viewer think he's seeing everything while at the same time you make him realize he's not. I try to make my pictures seem reasonable and then, at the last minute, pull the rug from beneath the viewer's feet, very gently so there's a little thrill.
The last change in our point of view gives the whole world a pictorial air.
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