A Quote by Susan Sontag

Although there is a sense in which the camera does indeed capture reality, not just interpret it, photographs are as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are

Susan Sontag

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Although Camera Capture Does Drawings Indeed Interpret Interpretation Just Much Paintings Photographs Reality Sense Which World

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Susan Sontag
American - Author
January 16, 1933 - December 28, 2004

During photography's first decades, exposure times were quite long... So, similar to the drawings produced with the help of a camera obscura, which depicted reality as static and immobile, early photographs represented the world as stable, eternal, unshakable.

Lev Manovich

Reality is how we interpret it. Imagination and volition play a part in that interpretation. Which means that all reality is to some extent a fiction.

Yann Martel

My photographs are not just about the instant of movement you capture in the camera. It's much more total, about constant movement that became static.

Gabriel Orozco

Although the poet has as wide a choice of subjects as the painter, his creations fail to afford as much satisfaction to mankind as do paintings... if the poet serves the understanding by way of the ear, the painter does so by the eye, which is the nobler sense.

Leonardo da Vinci

Whenever I am tired of making photographs of drawings, I make drawings of photographs.

Vik Muniz

Photographs also show the way that the camera sees. It's not just me or you or anybody else. The camera does something that is different from our own setting.

Lee Friedlander

You believe in the God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order in a world that objectively exists, and which I, in a wildly speculative way, am trying to capture. ... Even the great initial success of the quantum theory does not make me believe in the fundamental dice-game, although I am well aware that our younger colleagues interpret this as a consequence of senility. No doubt the day will come when we will see whose instinctive attitude was the correct one.

Albert Einstein

Black and white is a very minimalist art form and unlike color photographs does not pretend to mimic the world in a manner similar to the way the human eye might perceive... Black and white is essentially an abstract way to interpret and transform what one might refer to as reality.

Roger Ballen

I love to just listen and watch. I could happily watch a security camera at a store. Often during a day I'll see a guy selling pretzels or an argument that somebody's having on a stoop and I'll think, "Oh I wish I had my camera, I wish I could capture this moment." There's something about people being people and interacting that can be so beautiful when it's framed by a camera. That desire to capture people as they are, and the stubbornness to keep going when they don't necessarily want you to capture them being who they are, are key.

Marshall Curry

A critic in my house sees some paintings. Greatly perturbed, he asks for my drawings. My drawings? Never! They are my letters, my secrets.

Paul Gauguin

I love telling stories. And even in single images, I tend to have stories inside them. I've always loved film, but I was making drawings and paintings and photographs. And you put art and narrative together, and that really is comics.

Dave McKean

The way in which we experience and interpret the world obviously depends very much indeed on the kind of ideas that fill our minds. If they are mainly small, weak, superficial, and incoherent, life will appear insipid , uninteresting, petty and chaotic.

E. F. Schumacher

Appropriation is the idea that ate the art world. Go to any Chelsea gallery or international biennial and you'll find it. It's there in paintings of photographs, photographs of advertising, sculpture with ready-made objects, videos using already-existing film.

Jerry Saltz

My aim is increasingly to make my photographs look so much like photographs [rather than paintings, etchings, etc.] that unless one has eyes and sees, they won't be seen - and still everyone will never forget having once looked at them.

Alfred Stieglitz

Drawings are only a few lines on paper. Therefore it's easy to carry around in plastic bags. Drawings are cheaper than paintings. They don't pretend they'll last forever.

Marlene Dumas

I don't pretend to make my photographs speak the truth of what Mexico is all about. But in its villages I can feel the way culture is changing, and it's fascinating to live through it and try to capture it on camera.

Graciela Iturbide

A Quote by Susan Sontag

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