What the human eye observes casually and incuriously, the eye of the camera (the lens) notes with relentless fidelity.
Interpretation
The camera captures details that humans often overlook, highlighting the importance of careful observation.
In this quote, Berenice Abbott emphasizes that while humans may observe their surroundings superficially, the camera has the ability to document reality with precision and clarity. This reveals the value of art and technology in capturing truths that our own eyes might miss, encouraging a deeper appreciation for detail and observation.
In practice
This quote can be used in a photography workshop to inspire students to observe their surroundings more closely.
To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it. The photographer creates, evolves a better, a more selective, more acute seeing eye by looking ever more sharply at what is going on in the world.
Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.
Actually, documentary pictures include every subject in the world - good, bad, indifferent. I have yet to see a fine photograph which is not a good document.
Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.
The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.
Photography helps people to see.
I'm afraid that if you look at a thing long enough, it loses all of its meaning.
Art is either plagiarism or revolution.
I've been around long enough for people to know who I am and what my contributions are. They know me as more than just an artist. I think they know me as a woman as well.
Over time, I have come to see the work of literature less as narrating the world than "seeing the world with words." From the moment he begins to use words like colors in a painting, a writer can begin to see how wondrous and surprising the world is, and he breaks the bones of language to find his own voice. For this he needs paper, a pen, and the optimism of a child looking at the world for the first time.
I always try to keep that feeling of being on the edge. I'm afraid of knowing too well and seeming mechanical.
The hungry and the haunted explode in a rock'n'roll band.
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