A Quote by Duane Michals

You can't see fear or lust; you can't photograph someone's anxieties, how disappointment feels. Photographs are approximations.

Duane Michals

Quote Topics

Disappointment Fear Feels How Lust Photograph Photographs See Someone

Quote Author

Duane Michals
American - Photographer
Born: February 18, 1932

In a world where the 2 billionth photograph has been uploaded to Flickr, which looks like an Eggleston picture! How do you deal with making photographs with the tens of thousands of photographs being uploaded to Facebook every second, how do you manage that? How do you contribute to that? What's the point?

Alec Soth

I am not much interested in discovering new territories to photograph. Instead, what I wish my pictures could do is lessen the distance one often feels when looking at landscape photographs... The longer I work, the more important it is to me to make photographs that tell my story as a participant, and not just an observer of the land.

Mark Klett

As I was walking up the stairs to dad's old room, and I was looking at the photographs, I started thinking that there was a time when these weren't memories. That someone actually took the photograph, and the people in the photograph had just eaten lunch or something.

Stephen Chbosky

One remedy for the fear of not being loved is to remember how good it feels to love someone. If you're feeling unloved and you want to feel better, go love someone, and see what happens.

Dossie Easton

All of us tend to look at photographs as if we are simply gazing through a two-dimensional window onto some outside world. This is almost a perceptual necessity; in order to see what the photograph is of, we must first repress our consciousness of what the photograph is.

Geoffrey Batchen

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.

Sam Abell

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.

Sam Abell

I photograph to see what the world looks like in photographs.

Garry Winogrand

I think the most important thing is how long do we stay in the disappointment. When my mother would see us wallowing in disappointment she would say, "change the channel." So I replace the disappointment with a new direction of where I wanted to go and how I wanted to feel. Also, when something isn't coming my way, I believe it was not meant for me.

Agapi Stassinopoulos

Consider, for example, lust versus love. When we lust after someone or something, we think in terms of what they (or it) can do for us. When we love, however, our thoughts are immersed in what we can give to someone else. Giving makes us feel good, so we do it happily. But when we lust, we only want to take. When someone we love is in pain, we feel pain. When someone whom we lust is in pain, we only think in terms of what that loss or inconvenience means to us.

David J. Lieberman

The reason I do photographs is to help people understand my music, so it's very important that I am the same, emotionally, in the photographs as in the music. Most people's eyes are much better developed than their ears. If they see a certain emotion in the photograph, then they'll understand the music.

Bjork

Because each photograph is only a fragment, its moral and emotional weight depends on where it is inserted. A photograph changes according to the context in which it is seen: thus Smith's Minamata photographs will seem different on a contact sheet, in a gallery, in a political demonstration, in a police file, in a photographic magazine, in a book, on a living-room wall. Each o these situations suggest a different use for the photographs but none can secure their meaning.

Susan Sontag

At the end of the day, it's only a photograph and if someone is going to get really upset about a photograph, then they have a lot of issues. I just roll with it and see what happens.

Rankin

No matter what you are dealing with in life, be it resentment or regret, bitterness or sadness, anger or apathy, hatred or hesitation, depression or disempowerment, disappointment or other destructive anxieties, painful envy or emotional turmoil, fear of isolation or thoughts of failure, keep in mind that if you are positive, positivity will find you and embrace you!

Widad Akrawi

I think I am most fond of the unseen part. I mean that the various cultural experiences that I go through, and the behavioral aspects of getting the work done, are just as important as the installation and the photograph. So, for me, the relationship between the two is more about hybridism and the search for an ideal form that I'm never going to arrive at. The installation and the photograph are mere approximations of this ideal.