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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.
Irving Penn
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Interpretation

What this quote means

The quote expresses the idea that artistry can be a means to support one's family.

Irving Penn highlights the connection between his profession as a photographer and his responsibility as a provider for his family. Through his craft, he not only pursues his passion for photography but also ensures the financial support needed to raise and take care of his wife and children, emphasizing the role of art as a practical means to fulfill family obligations.

Themes

PhotographyFamilyArtistryResponsibilityProvider

In practice

Example use cases

During a speech at a photography seminar, I could use this quote to highlight the balance between artistry and providing for loved ones.

More from Irving Penn

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.
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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.
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I can get obsessed by anything if i look at it long enough. That's the curse of being a photographer.
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