A Quote by Sam Abell
I was known as a 35-mm photographer with a view-camera mentality.
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My lens of choice was always the 35 mm. It was more environmental. You can't come in closer with the 35 mm.
Once you change the technology - from a film camera to a video camera, or from an 8-mm camera to 16 mm - you change completely the content. With 8 mm, a leaf on a tree will be made up of maybe four grains. So it's very impressionistic, almost like Seurat. If you switch to 16 mm, the technology gives you hundreds of grains on that leaf.
For many years, I was on working on films which were so small of a budget that I could not even build a set. So, when I was finally able to work on set, it was a rewarding moment. I felt the same feeling when the camera changed from 16 mm to 35 mm.
I think the equipment you use has a real, visible influence on the character of your photography. You're going to work differently, and make different kinds of pictures, if you have to set up a view camera on a tripod than if you're Lee Friedlander with handheld 35 mm rangefinder. But fundamentally, vision is not about which camera or how many megapixels you have, it's about what you find important. It's all about ideas.
For me, couture is like 35 mm. film. It's so important we school ourselves to see real quality. In a couture garment, as in a 35 mm. film, you really feel the life of the people who made it. In high-street fashion, it's different. There's no risk.
I was so besotted with '8½' that, when it was on TV, I used to take pictures with my 35-mm. camera of the frames of the film. That was the first time I'd ever really seen Italians on screen.
Wanting to take a light camera with me when I climb or do mountain runs has kept me using exclusively 35 mm.
Learning how to use different formats has made me a better photographer. When I started working in medium format, it made me a better 35 mm photographer. When I started working in 4x5, it made me a better medium-format photographer.
I am not going to be dictated to by the size of the camera. I use everything from an 8 x 10 to a 35-mm. But I don't use these modern cameras which break down all the time !
This is how you can tell a real photographer: mostly, a real photographer does not say 'I wish I had my camera on me right now'. Instead a real photographer pulls out her camera and takes the photograph.
What some highbrows call rapport is nothing more than a mild flirtation between photographer and the girl on the other side of the camera. Some models get so professional they can send hours flirting with the camera itself while the poor photographer is reduced to the role of spectator.
If the photographer is interested in the people in front of his lens, and if he is compassionate, it's already a lot. The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.
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.
If a photographer cares about the people before the lens and is compassionate, much is given. It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.
Whatever she saw beyond the camera lens, beyond the photographer, beyond anything in the known world probably - wasn't fit to be seen.
When I first asked to take pictures of women at their homes, I was using my formal camera and I struggled to get the shots because I was still very much in the role of the photographer. Then the next time I had this little digital camera and their response to me would be completely different - I was a friend and I got new kinds of pictures. I was always treading a line between photographer and friend.
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