Everything is a subject. Every subject has a rhythm. To feel it is the raison detre. The photograph is a fixed moment of such a raison detre, which lives on in itself.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of recognizing the rhythm and essence of subjects in photography, capturing moments that hold deeper meaning.
Andre Kertesz suggests that everything around us has its own unique presence or 'rhythm,' and understanding this is crucial to appreciating life and art. A photograph serves as a freeze-frame of this essence, allowing viewers to connect with a fleeting moment and its intrinsic meaning, thereby immortalizing its significance.
In practice
In a photography class, discussing how Kertesz's quote captures the essence of a great shot.
If you want to write you should learn the alphabet. You write and write and in the end you hava a beautiful, perfect alphabet. But it isn’t the alphabed that is important. The important thing is what you are writing, what you are expressing. The same thing goes for photography. Photographs can be technically perfect and even beautiful, but they have no expression.
The moment always dictates in my work. What I feel, I do. This is the most important thing for me. Everybody can look, but they don't necessarily see. I never calculate or consider; I see a situation and I know that it's right, even if I have to go back to get the proper lighting.
Sometimes I wish that just solving the plot problems was enough. And then elves would go and do all the actual work moving the words around.
There is a beauty in nature and culture that we no longer have access to. Those things you can't forget, you embroider... The further you tell, the further you travel from truth, which means, of course, that literature is a lie.
If we don't tell our own stories, no one else will.
I find it strangely beautiful that the camera with its inherent clarity of object and detail can produce images that in spite of themselves offer possibilities to be more than they are a photograph of nothing very important at all, nothing but an intuition, a response, a twitch from the photographer’s experience.
Most actors, if you ask them if they play guitar, they'll say they played guitar for 20 years, but what they really mean is they've owned a guitar for 20 years.
Some people become cops because they want to make the world a better place. Some people become vandals because they want to make the world a better looking place.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.