A Quote by Harry Callahan
To be a photographer, one must photograph. No amount of book learning, no checklist of seminars attended, can substitute for the simple act of making pictures.
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A photograph records both the thing in front of the camera and the conditions of its making... A photograph is also a document of the state of mind of the photographer. And if you were to extend the idea of the set-up photograph beyond just physically setting up the picture, I would argue that the photographer wills the picture into being.
Fantasy isn't something I put into the pictures; I don't try and inject them with a sense of play. But it's about being an honest photographer; a photograph is as much of a mirror of the photographer as it is the subject.
For love of domination we must substitute equality; for love of victory we must substitute justice; for brutality we must substitute intelligence; for competition we must substitute cooperation. We must learn to think of the human race as one family.
As far as the surface is concerned - oil on canvas, conventionally applied - my pictures have little to do with the original photograph. They are totally painting (whatever that may mean). On the other hand, they are so like the photograph that the thing that distinguished the photograph from all other pictures remains intact.
I work in several different groups of pictures which act on and with each other - ranging from several abstracted manners to a form for the surreal. I have been called a preacher - but, in reality, I'm more generally philosophical. I have never made an abstracted photograph without content. An educated background in Zen influences all of my photographs. It has been said that my work resembles, more closely than any photographer, Le Douanier Rousseau - working in a fairly isolated area and feeding mostly on myself - I feel that I am a primitive photographer.
A book is quite a beautiful thing, even more so learning. Together, however, all they amount to is called book-learning.
Love always seeks for betterment, for ways of making life more workable, joyful, whole, and beautiful. Love examines every option available to bring about an improvement in life. This kind of discernment is an act of decency, not an act of judgment. Rigid philosophies of judgment will seek to establish structure as a substitute for decency, control as a substitute for trust, and the mind as a substitute for higher awareness.
Men die, heroically or fruitlessly, but man carries on. In Israel it is the same: the farmer must till the fields, the young must make love, and the photographer must, I suppose, be ready to photograph it all.
The photographer's most important and likewise most difficult task is not learning to manage his camera, or to develop, or to print. It is learning to see photographically — that is, learning to see his subject matter in terms of the capacities of his tools and processes, so that he can instantaneously translate the elements and values in a scene before him into the photograph he wants to make.
'The Chicken Soup for the Soul' books are the result of over 20 years of teaching seminars and giving speeches. The first book contains all of the stories that I used in my seminars to illustrate the points that I wanted to make.
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.
It is essential for the photographer to know the effect of his lenses. The lens is his eye, and it makes or ruins his pictures. A feeling for composition is a great asset. I think it is very much a matter of instinct. It can perhaps be developed, but I doubt if it can be learned. To achieve his best work, the young photographer must discover what really excites him visually. He must discover his own world.
A photograph is a photograph. When I am making a picture I am just interested in making a very interesting photograph. I don't care where it's going to go.
The photographer, like an acrobat, must defy the laws of probability or even of possibility; at the limit, he must defy those of the interesting: the photograph becomes surprising when we do not know why it has been taken.
I try to photograph people's spirits and thoughts. As to the soul-taking by the photographer, I don't feel I take away, but rather that the sitter and I give to each other. It becomes an act of mutual participation.
I now require this of all pictures, that they domesticate me, not that they dazzle me. Pictures must not be too picturesque. Nothing astonishes men so much as common-sense and plain dealing. All great actions have been simple, and all great pictures are.
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