Edward Weston Quotes

#1. People who wouldn't think of taking a sieve to the well to draw water fail to see the folly in taking a camera to make a painting.

Edward Weston

#2. Ultimately success or failure in photographing people depends on the photographer's ability to understand his fellow man.

Edward Weston

#3. Modern Art is being used to index me. Surely it was a source but photographers have influenced Modern Art quite as deeply as they have been influenced, maybe more. Anyway painters don't have a copyright on M. A. We were all born in the same upheaval.

Edward Weston

#4. It seems so utterly naive that landscape - not that of the pictorial school - is not considered of "social significance" when it has a far more important bearing on the human race of a given locale than excrescences called cities.

Edward Weston

#5. A new love came into my life, a most beautiful one, one which will, I believe, stand the test of time ... Perhaps C. will be remembered as the great love of my life. Already I have achieved certain heights reached with no other love.

Edward Weston

#6. Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.

Edward Weston

#7. I always work better when I do not reason, when no question of right or wrong enter in,-when my pulse quickens to the form before me without hesitation nor calculation.

Edward Weston

#8. As great a picture can be made as one's mental capacity-no greater. Art cannot be taught; it must be self-inspiration, though the imagination may be fired and the ambition and work directed by the advice and example of others.

Edward Weston

#9. My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.

Edward Weston

#10. I see no reason for recording the obvious.

Edward Weston

#11. To consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk.

Edward Weston

#12. The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?

Edward Weston

#13. Restricting too personal, and therefore prejudiced, interpretation leads to revolution - the fusion of an inner and outer reality derived from the wholeness of life - sublimating things seen into things known.

Edward Weston

#14. No photographer is better than the simplest of cameras

Edward Weston

#15. Now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. Such rules and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection.

Edward Weston

#16. An excellent conception can be quite obscured by faulty technical execution or clarified by faultless technique.

Edward Weston

#17. Photography suits the temper of this age - of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately.

Edward Weston

#18. I see my finished platinum print (in the viewfinder) in all its desired qualities, before my exposure.

Edward Weston

#19. Art is based on order. The world is full of 'sloppy Bohemians' and their work betrays them.

Edward Weston

#20. This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.

Edward Weston

#21. The painters have no copyright on modern art! ... I believe in, and make no apologies for, photography: it is the most important graphic medium of our day. It does not have to be, indeed cannot be - compared to painting - it has different means and aims.

Edward Weston

#22. If I am interested, amazed, stimulated to work, that is sufficient reason to thank the gods, and go ahead!

Edward Weston

#23. I would say to any artist: Don't be repressed in your work, dare to experiment, consider any urge, if in a new direction all the better.

Edward Weston

#24. Photography, not soft gutless painting, is best equipped to bore into the spirit of today.

Edward Weston

#25. It's hard not to tell the truth with a camera. Artists are particularly good at that.

Edward Weston

#26. There is nothing like a Bach fugue to remove me from a discordant moment ... only Bach hold up fresh and strong after repeated playing. I can always return to Bach when the other records weary me.

Edward Weston

#27. For the obvious reason that nature - unadulterated and unimproved by man - is simply chaos. In fact, the camera proves that nature is crude and lacking in arrangement ...

Edward Weston

#28. I want the stark beauty that a lens can so exactly render presented without interference of artistic effect.

Edward Weston

#29. Dare to be irrational! - keep free from formulas, open to any fresh impulse, fluid.

Edward Weston

#30. For photography is a way to capture the moment - not just any moment, but the important one, this one moment out of all time when your subject is revealed to the fullest - that moment of perfection which comes once and is not repeated.

Edward Weston

#31. I am not limiting myself to theories, so I never question the rightness to my approach.

Edward Weston

#32. To see the Thing itself is essential: the quintessence revealed direct without the fog of impressionism ... This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock. Significant presentation - not interpretation.

Edward Weston

#33. I don't care if you make a print on a bath mat, just as long as it is a good print.

Edward Weston

#34. My work is never intellectual. I never make a negative unless emotionally moved by my subject.

Edward Weston

#35. The pepper is beginning to show signs of strain, and tonight should grace a salad. It has been suggested that I am a cannibal to eat my models.

Edward Weston

#36. Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.

Edward Weston

#37. So called "composition" becomes a personal thing, to be developed along with technique, as a personal way of seeing.

Edward Weston

#38. My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me.

Edward Weston

#39. Clouds, torsos, shells, peppers, trees, rocks, smoke stacks, are but interdependent, interrelated parts of a whole, which is life.

Edward Weston

#40. Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn't photogenic.

Edward Weston

#41. Consulting the rules of composition before taking a photograph, is like consulting the laws of gravity before going for a walk.

Edward Weston

#42. To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible.

Edward Weston

#43. When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision. Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial cliches.

Edward Weston

#44. A photograph has no value unless it looks exactly like a photograph and nothing else.

Edward Weston

#45. The great scientist dares to differ from accepted 'facts' - think irrationally - let the artist do likewise.

Edward Weston

#46. Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.

Edward Weston

#47. I was extravagant in the matter of cameras - anything photographic - I had to have the best. But that was to further my work. In most things I have gone along with the plainest - or without.

Edward Weston

#48. Results alone should be appraised; the way in which these are achieved is of importance only to the maker.

Edward Weston

#49. If I have any 'message' worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.

Edward Weston

#50. A lifetime can well be spent correcting and improving one's own faults without bothering about others.

Edward Weston

#51. I find myself every so often looking at my ground glass as though the unrecorded image might escape me!

Edward Weston

#52. When a photographer masters the tools and processes of the art, then the quality of the work is only limited by his creative vision.

Edward Weston

#53. When money enters in - then, for a price, I become a liar - and a good one I can be whether with pencil or subtle lighting or viewpoint. I hate it all, but so do I support not only my family, but my own work.

Edward Weston

#54. "Only with effort can the camera be forced to lie: basically it is an honest medium: so the photographer is much more likely to approach nature in a spirit of inquiry, of communion, instead of with the saucy swagger of self-dubbed "artists"."

Edward Weston

#55. Why limit yourself to what your eyes see when you have an opportunity to extend your vision?

Edward Weston

#56. Since the recording process is instantaneous, and the nature of the image such that it cannot survive corrective handwork, it is obvious that the finished print must be created in full before the film is exposed.

Edward Weston

#57. The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.

Edward Weston

#58. The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer's understanding of his subject and mastery of his process.

Edward Weston

#59. Through this photographic eye you will be able to look out on a new light-world, a world for the most part uncharted and unexplored, a world that lies waiting to be discovered and revealed.

Edward Weston

#60. Is love like art - something always ahead, never quite attained.

Edward Weston