A Quote by William J. Mitchell

Exile is a series of photographs without texts. — © William J. Mitchell
Exile is a series of photographs without texts.
Probably all of us, writers and readers alike, set out into exile, or at least into a certain kind of exile, when we leave childhood behind...The immigrant, the nomad, the traveler, the sleepwalker all exist, but not the exile, since every writer becomes an exile simply by venturing into literature, and every reader becomes an exile simply by opening a book.
I'm Jewish. That's all. So I am in exile all the time. Wherever we go, we are in exile. Even in Israel, we are in exile.
It is curious that I always want to group things, a series of sonnets, a series of photographs; whatever rationalizations appear, they originate in urges that are rarely satisfied with single images.
I think that writing texts, publishing texts, selling texts in a physical book store is one of the important tools for breeding this new generation.
Exile is a dream of a glorious return. Exile is a vision of revolution: Elba, not St Helena. It is an endless paradox: looking forward by always looking back. The exile is a ball hurled high into the air.
Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths.
From taking photographs of George and Charlotte, I have been struck by the wonderful lack of self-consciousness that you see in photographs of children, without the self-awareness that adults generally feel.
Saudi Arabia is so conservative. At first there were photographs of women I took that I couldn't publish - of women without their abayas. So I started writing out little anecdotes about things I couldn't photograph and wove it in with a more obscure picture and called it "moments that got away". I realised these worked as well as the photographs by themselves. There are a lot of photographers who feel the story is all in the photographs but I really believe in weaving in complementary words with the pictures.
I've had photographs taken for portraits because I very much prefer working from the photographs than from models... I couldn't attempt to do a portrait from photographs of somebody I didn't know.
I remember many years ago, I asked [Dalai Lama] about exile and he said: "Well, exile is good because it's brought me and my people closer to reality," and reality is almost a shrine before which he sits. Exile brings us up against the wall and forces us to rise to the challenge of the moment.
I think evangelicals would do better if they concentrated less on bolstering the formal authority of the Scripture - which I certainly would want to affirm - and more on displaying how biblical texts can shape lives in salutary ways, how they are fruitful texts, how they are texts one can live according to.
My exile was not only a physical one, motivated exclusively by political reasons; it was also a moral, social, ideological and sexual exile.
Exile is not a time frame. Exile is an experience. It's a sentiment.
It's true that in Romanian I feel more relaxed, as if I'm wearing slippers...but I came to this decision primarily for other reasons: I had only published three collections of texts in Romania. Even before my exile I was prohibited from publishing, I was ignored and forgotten. In going back to Romanian I had the opportunity to take my revenge.
The Jew is at once alienated and indestructible; he is in exile from his own country and in exile even from himself, yet he survives the annihilating fury of history.
In reality, the monotheist texts preach neither peace, love nor tolerance. They are texts of hate.
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