I heard a few good quotes today on the History of Photography podcast I listen to and thought I’d share:
From Aaron Siskind:
When I make a photograph I want it to be an altogether new object, complete and self-contained, whose basic condition is order. Unlike the world and events whose permanent condition is change and disorder. I want to make an object that confronts you. Not an object you’re just looking at. It’s parallel to you.
From Bill Brandt:
Photography is still a very new medium and everything must be tried and dared. Photography has no rules, it is not a sport. It’s the results that counts no matter how it’s achieved.
I did not always know just what it was I wanted to photograph. I believe it’s important for a photographer to discover this, for unless he finds what it is that excites him, what it is that calls forth at once an emotional response, he is unlikely to achieve his best work. For me it was not easy.