A Quote by David Hockney

I've always said that the only thing a photograph is good at capturing faithfully is another flat surface. — © David Hockney
I've always said that the only thing a photograph is good at capturing faithfully is another flat surface.
I find the surface of a photograph a thing of beauty in and of itself, and it is this surface that makes a photograph unique relative to other two-dimensional media.
It's easy to photograph light reflecting from a surface, the truly hard part is capturing the light in the air.
Together, we looked down at the tiny house, the sole thing on this vast, flat surface. Like the only person living on the moon. It could be either lonely or peaceful, depending on how you looked at it. "It's a start," I said.
It required some rudeness to disturb with our boat the mirror-like surface of the water, in which every twig and blade of grass was so faithfully reflected; too faithfully indeed for art to imitate, for only Nature may exaggerate herself.
As far as the surface is concerned - oil on canvas, conventionally applied - my pictures have little to do with the original photograph. They are totally painting (whatever that may mean). On the other hand, they are so like the photograph that the thing that distinguished the photograph from all other pictures remains intact.
If you are truly successful in capturing the pulse of life, then you can speak of a good photograph.
Someone said to me, early on in film school... if you can photograph the human face you can photograph anything, because that is the most difficult and most interesting thing to photograph.
You can't get at the thing itself, the real nature of the sitter, by stripping away the surface. You can only get beyond the surface by working with the surface. All that you can do is manipulate that surface - gesture, costume, expression - radically and correctly.
As I've said many times, it's one thing to dream about something; it's another thing to experience it. It's one thing to think you're good enough; it's another thing to know you're good enough.
But there is always creative destruction in markets: there are always new winners taking the place of those that are. So if you only look at the market's surface, it may appear flat, but there's always huge turbulence taking place within.
I think one thing with Sweden is that in some way the Swedish society is a very good society, almost perfect on the surface. That is something that makes the writers forced to see what is underneath the surface, because it's always something underneath the surface, of course.
A truly obedient man does not discriminate between one thing and another, since his only aim is to execute faithfully whatever may be assigned to him.
But, in this separation I associate you only with the good and I will faithfully hold you to that always, for you have done far more good than harm, let me feel now what sharp distress I may.
The thing about the summit region of Mount Washington, it can have areas that are flat and rolling. In those conditions, it's very difficult not to become disoriented, because it's not like you're on a face where you know what's up and what's down. You're on a flat surface. Every direction is the same in a white-out condition. And with wind speeds constantly changing direction, within a minute you have no idea where you are.
The way in which the photograph records experience is also different from the way of language. Language makes sense only when it is presented as a sequence of propositions. Meaning is distorted when a word or sentence is, as we say, taken out of context; when a reader or listener is deprived of what was said before, and after. But there is no such thing as a photograph taken out of context, for a photograph does not require one. In fact, the point of photography is to isolate images from context, so as to make them visible in a different way.
I have always been concerned with painting that simultaneously insists on a flat surface and then denies it.
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