QuoteProject
Photography doesn't teach you to express your emotions; it teaches you how to see.
Berenice Abbott
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Photography enhances your vision and perception rather than emotions.

This quote emphasizes the idea that photography is not merely an outlet for our emotional expressions but rather a skill that sharpens our ability to observe the world around us. It suggests that through the lens of a camera, one learns to perceive details, patterns, and beauty that may otherwise go unnoticed in daily life, therefore improving one’s overall awareness and insight.

Themes

PhotographyPerceptionArtEmotionVisualObservation

In practice

Example use cases

During a photography workshop, I shared this quote to highlight the importance of observation.

More from Berenice Abbott

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.
Berenice AbbottRead
Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.
Berenice AbbottRead
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.
Berenice AbbottRead
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.
Berenice AbbottRead
The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.
Berenice AbbottRead
Photography helps people to see.
Berenice AbbottRead

Similar quotes

For Poesy alone can tell her dreams, With the fine spell of words alone can save Imagination from the sable charm And dumb enchantment. Who alive can say, ‘Thou art no Poet may’st not tell thy dreams?’ Since every man whose soul is not a clod Hath visions, and would speak, if he had loved And been well nurtured in his mother tongue. Whether the dream now purpos’d to rehearse Be poet’s or fanatic’s will be known When this warm scribe my hand is in the grave.
John KeatsRead
I think of myself as a stylist, and stylists can become notoriously obsessed with the placing of a comma, the weight of a semicolon.
Truman CapoteRead
You can bring out your inner self and moods through dancing. Music does the same.
Michael JacksonRead
The two things you can't fake are good food and good music
Etta JamesRead
he was for long my only audience... Only from him did I ever get the idea that my ‘stuff’ could be more than a private hobby. But for his interest and unceasing eagerness for more I should never have brought The L. of the R. to a conclusion.
J. R. R. TolkienRead
That's the most important thing to me - that if I'm gonna spend however long it takes to make a movie, give up 14 hours a day for however many weeks or months, then it's very important for me to know that I'm working with people who I respect and enjoy and that we're going for something together.
Brad PittRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.