A Quote by Petra Collins

We [photographers] have the tools and the power to create images - we should try to make them as truthful as possible. — © Petra Collins
We [photographers] have the tools and the power to create images - we should try to make them as truthful as possible.
We make tools for people. Tools to create, tools to communicate. The age we're living in, these tools surprise you. ... That's why I love what we do. Because we make these tools, and we're constantly surprised with what people do with them.
I play with language a great deal in my poems, and I enjoy that. I try to condense language, that is, I try to express complicated but I hope real emotions as simply as possible. But that doesn't mean the poems are simple, just that they are as truthful as I can make them.
Look inside your soul and find your tools. We all have tools and have to live with the help of them. I have two tools—my words and my images.
My parents are really supportive of my interests and try to help make them happen with the tools I need. More importantly, they instilled in me that anything is possible if you work hard to make it happen.
I say things, but I say them indirectly. At the same time, I try to make my images as direct as possible.
I am myself a professional creator of images, a film-maker. And then there are the images made by the artists I collect, and I have noticed that the images I create are not so very different from theirs. Such images seem to suggest how I feel about being here, on this planet. And maybe that is why it is so exciting to live with images created by other people, images that either conflict with one's own or demonstrate similarities to them.
There are many aspects about what and why we photograph: visual pleasure, personal empathy, intellectual stimulation, technical excellence, etc. Serious photographers and artists will try to create works that are original. Over a career period they may develop a singular identity in their images.
There are photographers whose shows I try to make it my business to see, if I'm in the city. There are photographers I have no interest in at all.
I always try to create equal power between the subject and the object, so as not to end up creating a relationship where the camera is here and the object out there. This is for me a very difficult and sensitive balance. When I produce a work, cut and frame images, I realize that spectators can identify with the images and almost forget that someone else actually made them. This would be the optimal situation. I don't know whether I succeed in doing so, but that's what I would like to have happen.
Our communication space is very fragmented today. We have a million different tools for different things with lots of different kinds of overlaps. The most natural way to try and solve that problem is to take all those different tools and try to make them smaller and fit into a single package and maybe integrate them across the boundaries.
As an amateur you have an advantage over photographers - you can do as you wish... This should make amateurs the happiest of photographers.
The power of Hollywood, as we know, is that it can create these images in people's minds, and they live with those images for their whole life.
Images work on so many different levels. As a writer you feel them, try not to get in their way or narrow them down to anything other or less complex. A writer is a curator of sorts - once you've brought the images together you try to stand at a respectful distance and let them speak for themselves. Try not to mess with their ambiguities and contradictions. They are what they are, irreducible. This is their integrity.
I try to teach people to make fewer mistakes. But in designing economic policies, we need to take full account of the fact that people are busy, they're absent minded, they're lazy, and that we should try to make things as easy for them as possible.
Be as honest with yourself as possible, and try to make friends with people who like you for you - not an iteration of who you are, or who you think you should be - but really like you for you. And when you're creating whatever you want to do in your life, just try to create and put out the truest version of yourself into the world.
Our visit to this planet is short, so we should use our time meaningfully, which we can do by helping others wherever possible. And if we cannot help others, at least we should try not to create pain and suffering for them.
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