QUOTATIONS
Dorothea Lange
Dorothea Lange (May 26, 1895 – October 11, 1965) was an American documentary photographer and photojournalist, best known for her Depression-era work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA). Lange's photographs humanized the consequences of the Great Depression and influenced the development of documentary photography.
“A camera teaches you how to see without a camera.”
“Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.”
“A great photograph is one that fully expresses what one feels, in the deepest sense, about what is being photographed.”
“Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion... the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate.”
“While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see.”
“Seeing is more than a physiological phenomenon... We see not only with our eyes but with all that we are and all that our culture is. The artist is a professional see-er.”
“To know ahead of time what you’re looking for means you’re then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting, and often false.”
“The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable.”
“The words that come direct from the people are the greatest... If you substitute one out of your own vocabulary, it disappears before your eyes.”
“You know there are moments such as these when time stands still...”
“That frame of mind that you need to make fine pictures of a very wonderful subject, you cannot do it by not being lost yourself.”
“One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind.”