A Quote by Zoe Leonard

Something about photography is tied to a very specific relationship with the material world. It doesn't have to be, but the way I practice it, it is. So there's an act of observation, but it's not an act of objective recording. It's about framing something and seeing it and understanding that it's relational.

Zoe Leonard

Quote Topics

About Act Framing Material Material World Objective Observation Photography Practice Recording Relationship Seeing Something Specific Tied Understanding Very Way World

Quote Author

Zoe Leonard
American - Artist
Born: 1961

There's a reductiveness to photography, of course - in the framing of reality and the exclusion of chunks of it (the rest of the world, in fact). It's almost as if the act of photography bears some relationship to how we consciously manage the uncontrollable set of possibilities that exist in life.

Philip-Lorca diCorcia

Language is inexorably tied to power and understanding. And power and understanding are the roots of magic. Just the act of writing something down is a magical act.

Patrick Rothfuss

I'm an actor that loves to eat on camera. I love it. Something about the act of eating means that you actually can't act as much. You have to be involved in the very real task of trying to ingest sustenance without choking and dying. Something about that process takes the heat off trying to act and often feels more natural.

Grace Lynn Kung

There is indeed something omnivorous about the act of photography. It offers a way of responding to everything about everything.

Lucy R. Lippard

There's just something about being on stage and being with the people that, once that camera turns on, you find the strength to keep it cool, look good, act like you're not cold, act like you ain't nervous, act like you aren't scared. I think that comes with confidence and practice.

Prince Royce

When one is rising, standing, walking, doing something, stopping, one should constantly concentrate one's mind on the act and the doing of it, not one ones' relation to the act or its character or value... One should simply practice concentration of the mind on the act itself, understanding it to be an expedient means for attaining tranquility of mind, realization, insight, and wisdom.

Asvaghosa

We're talking about race. It's ideology, it's a mode of policy. It's a practice. And it intertwines with class in a very specific way to create something very distinctive that we see now being legitimated in the United States by fascists who absolutely are unapologetic about what they're saying.

Henry Giroux

The finest act of seeing is necessarily always the act of not seeing something else.

Mark Z. Danielewski

The sexual act - thinking about the sexual act, the telling about the sexual act, after the sexual act, is so much more important than the actual sexual act - just in time. It's like of the whole sexual act, you probably spend 95% of the time thinking about it, talking about it afterwards. The actually sexual act, especially when you're 17, is minutes.

Will Gluck

There's something about the Houdini act that is not always made clear - about the escape act in general.

James Randi

There's just something "off" about equating the act of spending three years writing a book with the act of someone exploiting themselves by drunkenly flashing the camera for "Girls Gone Wild" or something.

Marie Calloway

Realism is a philosophy as opposed to a style. For me, painting is about observing and recording my existence as accurately as I can, it's my way of understanding the world around me and staying constantly engaged with it, the more carefully and patiently I look at what interests me in the world the more faithfully and honestly I can document it. It is only through intense, subtly nuanced observation that we develop an understanding of the psychology of the subject.

David Kassan

I chose makeup over photography because there was something very sensual about makeup that I loved. But photography was always in the back of my mind. That was always something that I was very connected with: looking at magazines, enjoying photography, and then taking pictures myself when I was a kid.

Francois Nars

It's very difficult when you're in something to be objective enough about the material to just see it for what it is. You either read too much into it and become too passionate about it, or you're disappointed.

Toby Stephens

Photography is an art of observation - it's about creating something extraordinary out of the ordinary. You choose a frame and then wait until the right time for something magical to come along and fill it.