A Quote by Ben Shahn

In the South or in the mine country, wherever you point the camera there is a picture. — © Ben Shahn
In the South or in the mine country, wherever you point the camera there is a picture.
Where you point the camera is the question and the picture you get is the answer to decipher.
Camera 1.0 was film. Camera 2.0 was digital. 3.0 is a light-field camera that opens all these new possibilities for your picture taking.
When the photographer is nearby, I like to say, 'Quick, get a photo of me looking into the camera,' because I'm never looking into the camera. Christopher Nolan looks into the camera, but I think most directors don't, so whenever you see a picture of a director looking at the camera, it's fake.
Wherever a ship ploughs the sea, or a plough furrows the field; wherever a mine yields its treasure; wherever a ship or a railroad train carries freight to market; wherever the smoke of the furnace rises, or the clang of the loom resounds; even in the lonely garret where the seamstress plies her busy needle--there is industry.
A camera alone does not make a picture. To make a picture you need a camera, a photographer and above all a subject. It is the subject that determines the interest of the photograph.
I don't remember the first picture I took, but I actually found a picture of myself on a trip back to my old family home in Malaysia. I'm five years old, sitting on the floor with the family camera in my hand. It was a film camera - not a DSLR - with a fixed lens and a nice manual zoom.
The camera has a mind of its own--its own point of view. Then the human bearer of time stumbles into the camera's gaze--the camera's domain of pristine space hitherto untraversed is now contaminated by human temporality. Intrusion occurs, but the camera remains transfixed by its object. It doesn't care. The camera has no human fears.
One time a guy handed me a picture. He said, 'Here's a picture of me when I was younger.' Every picture is of you when you were younger. 'Here's a picture of me when I'm older.' 'You son of bit, how'd you pull that off Let me see that camera. What's it look like'
Rap's the only music that they categorize like that. That's one thing that I hate, like, down South rap, or up North rap. Country is just country rather than wherever it's from. R&B, you don't call it Atlanta R&B, you know what I mean. So that's already like a shot at our culture.
The camera is one of the most frightening of modern weapons, particularly to people who have been in warfare, who have been bombed and shelled for at the back of a bombing run is invariably a photograph. In the back of ruined towns, and cities, and factories, there is aerial mapping, or spy mapping, usually with a camera. Therefore the camera is a feared instrument, and a man with a camera is suspected and watched wherever he goes... In the minds of most people today the camera is the forerunner of destruction, and it is suspected, and rightly so.
Never ever say the word shoot when you are taking a picture with a camera because a camera is not a violent weapon.
There isn't a country I ain't touch in Africa. I just came back from South of France, I toured China, Japan, wherever you name, 60,000 people come out to see Fat Joe.
It is said that the camera cannot lie, but rarely do we allow it to do anything else, since the camera sees what you point it at: the camera sees what you want it to see.
I always think, 'What does this picture mean? What's the best place to put my camera? Do I have anything extra in the picture, things in the background that will distract? Am I in the basic position that will give the essential things for this picture but not too much?'
I want to get to the stage where nobody can tell how a picture of mine is done. What's the point of that? Simply that I want nothing but emotion given off by it.
My own country, Slovakia, has been there for South Sudan and its people. We made South Sudan a priority country of our official development assistance and humanitarian aid.
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