A Quote by Ruth Bernhard

I've always photographed beauty, but I've never been beautiful myself. — © Ruth Bernhard
I've always photographed beauty, but I've never been beautiful myself.
The line between the reality that is photographed because it seems beautiful to us and the reality that seems beautiful because it has been photographed is very narrow.
For the first time, I wasn't embarrassed by the look of beauty, of elegance, because when you see someone who has only one rag as their property, but it happens to be beautiful and pink and silk, beauty doesn't have to be separated... I have always said that you shouldn't have biases, you shouldn't have prejudices. But before that [before his trip to India, circa 1975] I'd never been able to use purple, because it was too beautiful.
There is a thing about beauty. Beauty is always associated with the male fantasy of what the female body is. I don’t think there is anything wrong with beauty. It’s just what women think is beautiful can be different. And there can be a beauty in individualism. If there is a wart or a scar, this can be beautiful, in a sense, when you paint it.
I always hear myself saying , 'She's a beauty!' or 'He's a beauty!' or 'What a beauty!' but I never know what I'm talking about.
I always hear myself saying, 'She's a beauty!' or 'He's a beauty!' or 'What a beauty!' but I never know what I'm talking about.
I've grown up around people who love photography, and I think from being photographed for so long, I always wanted to understand how it worked, and I've been fortunate enough to be photographed by some really wonderful photographers, and so I learnt a lot from them, and I always ask them questions.
We live in a time when people are afraid of beauty, because beauty passes; you can't hang on to it. And even if you see something or someone beautiful, the next time you hear it, it sounds different. So you can't cling to beauty; beauty passes and when that passes, you realize you pass too, and you will die. And that's why people cry at a beautiful view, a beautiful lecture, a beautiful painting, a new baby.
Here's the thing: I'm not beautiful. I mean, I'm a perfectly normal-looking Jewish guy. My face has never been my fortune, nor has my body... physical beauty has never been part of my equation. It's just not on my shopping list.
It is cruel, you know, that music should be so beautiful. It has the beauty of loneliness of pain: of strength and freedom. The beauty of disappointment and never-satisfied love. The cruel beauty of nature and everlasting beauty of monotony.
When I was photographed, I didn't feel I was acting. I just felt I was being photographed. It sort of taught me things about myself that I didn't know and was trying to find out.
It is not expensive to be beautiful. It takes only a little effort to be presentable and beautiful. But it takes some effort. And unfortunately people think of beauty as luxury, beauty as frivolity, ... or extravagance. Beauty is a discipline, beauty is art, is harmony, in the ideological sense and in the theological sense, beauty is God and love made real. And the ultimate reach in this world is beauty.
The experience of beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say. The artist's relation to the object of beauty, how the art makes that happen, is a whole other subject. Beauty is an event. Beauty is something that happens. There is no such thing as a beautiful object or a beautiful woman.
Beauty is as relative as light and dark. Thus, there exists no beautiful woman, none at all, because you are never certain that a still far more beautiful woman will not appear and completely shame the supposed beauty of the first.
I think I did realize that early on, and then I went through a fun phase where I was figuring out who I was and the different sides of myself. I think like most women, I bought into a certain ideal of beauty that I didn't quite fit into, and I tried to pretzel myself and alter myself to be what I was told is beautiful, and then I realized that you are in control of what you think is beautiful.
Before I modeled, I never thought I was beautiful. Even right now, I don't think I'm beautiful. I think it's my personality that makes my beauty different and unique. If you look in the past, Chinese people have always considered things like big eyes, pointy nose, or big lips beautiful. I had the same thoughts as a child watching movies.
The experience of beauty is in the eye of the beholder, as they say. The artist's relation to the object of beauty, how the art makes that happen, is a whole other subject. Beauty is an event. Beauty is something that happens. There is no such thing as a beautiful object or a beautiful woman. These things do not come near it - the experience of beauty, the event of beauty. The anxiety about it is what makes it such a central concern of culture and makes us so interested in it.
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