I've tried a few times to depart from what I know I can do, and I've failed. I've tried to work outside the studio, but it introduces too many variables that I can't control. I'm really quite narrow, you know.
Interpretation
The quote reflects an artist's struggle with experimenting beyond their familiar boundaries and the challenges that come with it.
Irving Penn expresses the difficulty of stepping outside of one's expertise and comfort zone, acknowledging that while attempts to innovate may have been made, the unpredictable nature of new environments can lead to failure. This statement highlights the tension between creativity and the constraints of one's established skills, suggesting that true mastery may lie within a more focused and controlled artistic practice.
In practice
An artist might share this quote during a workshop to emphasize the importance of knowing one's artistic limits.
Sensitive people faced with the prospect of a camera portrait put on a face they think is one they would like to show the world very often what lies behind the facade is rare and more wonderful than the subject knows or dares to believe.
I am a professional photographer because it is the best way I know to earn the money I require to take care of my wife and children.
I can get obsessed by anything if i look at it long enough. That's the curse of being a photographer.
Footballers can be like artists when the mind and body are working as one. It is what Miles Davis does when he plays free jazz - everything pulls together into one intense moment that is beautiful.
One does not read a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks with hopes that it will grant him a career in engineering; he does so because poetry helps him see something in the world that he might not have seen before.
Like the collector, the photographer is animated by a passion that, even when it appears to be for the present, is linked to a sense of the past.
I ground matter to find the continuous line. And when I realized I could not find it, I stopped, as if an unseen someone had slapped my hands.
All great art is revolutionary because it touches upon the reality of man and questions the reality of the various transitory forms of human society.
The office of poetry is not to make us think accurately, but feel truly.
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