A Quote by Ansel Adams
There are always two people in every picture: the photographer and the viewer.
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The personality and style of a photographer usually limits the type of subject with which he deals best. For example Cartier-Bresson is very interested in people and in travel; these things plus his precise feeling for geometrical relationships determine the type of pictures he takes best. What is of value is that a particular photographer sees the subject differently. A good picture must be a completely individual expression which intrigues the viewer and forces him to think.
What is of value is that a particular photographer sees the subject differently than I do. A good picture must be a completely individual expression which intrigues the viewer and forces him to think.
A photographer is a witness. He has a moral duty. Every picture must be true and honest. I believe a photographer's strength is his ability to accurately record reality. There are photographers who think they are lucky if they find unusual or special subject. But it is never the subject that is so marvelous. It is how alive and real the photographer can make it.
You do your work as a photographer and everything becomes past. Words are more like thoughts; the photographer's picture is always surrounded by a kind of romantic glamor - no matter what you do, and how you twist it.
A photograph records both the thing in front of the camera and the conditions of its making... A photograph is also a document of the state of mind of the photographer. And if you were to extend the idea of the set-up photograph beyond just physically setting up the picture, I would argue that the photographer wills the picture into being.
The picture is not made by the photographer, the picture is more good or less good in function of the relationship that you have with the people you photograph.
Photography is inherently an analytic discipline. Where a painter starts with a blank canvas and builds a picture, a photographer starts with the messiness of the world and selects a picture. A photographer standing before houses and streets and people and trees and artifacts of a culture imposes an order on the scene - simplifies the jumble by giving it structure. He or she imposes this order by choosing a vantage point, choosing a frame, choosing a moment of exposure, and by selecting a plane of focus.
It is the photographer's decision at the two levels of seeing the picture - when it is shot and when it is chosen and printed that determines his personal style.
I always feel that a viewer has an expectation about every moment of the film and where it's going, so if I act against that, I've created a twist. In fact, it becomes a kind of game with the expectations of the viewer. This is the superficial appearance. In the layer beneath, there is a hidden theme.
The artist is always concerned with a total view of the world. However, when the photographer takes a picture ... the edge of his picture is just as interesting as the middle, one can only guess at the existence of a whole, and the view presented seems chosen by chance.
I've never not been sure that I was a photographer any more than you would not be sure you were yourself. I was a photographer, or wanting to be a photographer, or beginning - but some phase of photographer I've always been.
It is easy to make a picture of someone and call it a portrait. The difficulty lies in making a picture that makes the viewer care about a stranger.
I always feel that a viewer has an expectation about every moment of the film and where it's going, so if I act against that, I've created a twist. In fact it becomes a kind of game with the expectations of the viewer. This is the superficial appearance. In the layer beneath there is a hidden theme. The result of each twist is that the judgment of the audience member is challenged.
But there is more to a fine photograph than information. We are also seeking to present an image that arouses the curiosity of the viewer or that, best of all, provokes the viewer to think-to ask a question or simply to gaze in thoughtful wonder. We know that photographs inform people. We also know that photographs move people. The photograph that does both is the one we want to see and make. It is the kind of picture that makes you want to pick up your own camera again and go to work.
A good photograph will prove to the viewer how little our eyes permit us to see. Most people, really, don’t see-see only what they have always seen and what they expect to see-where a photographer, if he’s good, will see everything. And better if he sees things he doesn’t expect to see.
To me documentary photography means making a picture so that the viewer doesn’t think about the man who made the picture. At its esthetic core is very old tradition in art: naturalism. And its purpose is to document all facets of social relationships.
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