A Quote by Vito Acconci

Maybe I had to stop photographing so that I could learn to touch. — © Vito Acconci
Maybe I had to stop photographing so that I could learn to touch.
I never stopped photographing. There were a couple of years when I didn't have a darkroom, but that didn't stop me from photographing.
We could learn to stop when the sun goes down and when the sun comes up. We could learn to listen to the wind; we could learn to notice that it's raining or snowing or hailing or calm. We could reconnect with the weather that is ourselves, and we could realize that it's sad. The sadder it is, and the vaster it is, the more our heart opens. We can stop thinking that good practice is when it's smooth and calm, and bad practice is when it's rough and dark. If we can hold it all in our hearts, then we can make a proper cup of tea.
It wasn't even a matter of what I was photographing, as what had happened to me in the process. When I discovered that I could look at the horror of Belsen --4000 dead and starving lying around-- and think only of a nice photographic composition, I knew something had happened to me and I had to stop. I felt I was like the people running the camp --it didn't mean a thing.
People aren’t photographing for history any more. It’s for immediate gratification. If you’re photographing to share an image, you’re not photographing to keep it.
He was quiet. I said nothing, hoping that maybe, for once, he'd stop pretenting he was okay. Then I could, too. That we could both forget the roles that had so long bound us.
When you venture at life with curiosity, you can learn from anything. You learn from things that you could never maybe thought you could learn from. And when you actually step into the room with a lot of people who have an education in a classroom, that is very similar to other people's educations, you'll actually come with a unique perspective that could be a valuable perspective that creates an innovation that could change the world.
Yet you could feel a vibration in the air, a sense of hastening. It had started with the moon, inaccessible poem that it was. Now men had walked upon it, rubber treads on a pearl of the gods. Perhaps it was an awareness of time passing, the last summer of the decade. Sometimes I just wanted to raise my hands and stop. But stop what? Maybe just growing up.
...I started photographing myself, and found that I could see portions of myself that I had never seen before. Since I face just my face in the mirror, I know pretty much what it's like. When I see a side-view I'm not used to it, and find it peculiar... So, photographing myself and discovering unknown territories of my surface self causes an interesting psychological confrontation.
But, finally, I had to open my eyes. I had to stop keeping secrets. The truth, thankfully, is insistent. What I saw then made action necessary. I had to see people for who they were. I had to understand why I made the choices I did. Why I had given them my loyalty. I had to make changed. I had to stop allowing love to be dangerous. I had to learn how to protect myself. But first… I had to look
We are a feelingless people. If we could really feel, the pain would be so great that we would stop all the suffering. If we could feel that one person every six seconds dies of starvation ... we would stop it. ... If we could really feel it in the bowels, the groin, in the throat, in the breast, we would go into the streets and stop the war, stop slavery, stop the prisons, stop the killing, stop destruction.
I hate having my photograph taken and I try to keep that in mind when I'm photographing other people. But the best photos that I've taken are the ones when people have forgotten that I'm there. If I'm in a recording studio with a musician, for example, maybe I'm not photographing them in the middle of a take but I can just get that stolen moment of them resting and they glance over to me.
When I get the strength to leave, you always tell me that you need me. And I'm weak cause I believe you and I'm mad because I love you. So I stop and think that maybe you could learn to appreciate me, and it all remains the same that you ain't never gonna change.
I had to learn compassion. Had to learn what it felt like to hate, and to forgive and to love and be loved. And to lose people close to me. Had to feel deep loneliness and sorrow. And then I could write.
One day, we were doing a serious scene and fast talking like we do and we could not stop laughing and the director had to stop the production. We had to go to our trailer and calm down and do it all again.
It’s really simple actually. It’s just, try and make people happy. Maybe you have to learn with time. Maybe you have to learn it the hard way. But as long as you learn it, you’re going to make the world a better place.
But maybe you never really had someone, she thought now. Maybe, no matter how much you loved them, they could slip through your fingers like water, and there was nothing you could do about it.
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