Top 31 W. Eugene Smith Quotes
#1. I can't stand these damn shows on museum walls with neat little frames, where you look at the images as if they were pieces of art. I want them to be pieces of life!
W. Eugene Smith
#2. What's the best type of light? Why that would be available light ... and by available light I mean any damn light is available.
W. Eugene Smith
#3. Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors.
W. Eugene Smith
#4. Many claim I am a photographer of tragedy. In the greater sense I am not, for though I often photograph where the tragic emotion is present, the result is almost invariably affirmative.
W. Eugene Smith
#5. Never have I found the limits of the photographic potential. Every horizon, upon being reached, reveals another beckoning in the distance. Always, I am on the threshold.
W. Eugene Smith
#7. My photographs at best hold only a small length, but through them I would suggest and criticize and illuminate and try to give compassionate understanding.
W. Eugene Smith
#8. The journalistic photographer can have no other than a personal approach; and it is impossible for him to be completely objective. Honest - yes. Objective - no.
W. Eugene Smith
#10. Photography is a small voice, at best, but sometimes one photograph, or a group of them, can lure our sense of awareness.
W. Eugene Smith
#11. The first word I would remove from the folklore of journalism is the word objective.
W. Eugene Smith
#12. And each time I pressed the shutter release it was a shouted condemnation hurled with the hope that the picture might survive through the years, with the hope that they might echo through the minds of men in the future - causing them caution and remembrance and realization.
W. Eugene Smith
#15. I try to take what voice I have and I give it to those who don't have one at all.
W. Eugene Smith
#16. If I can get them to think, get them to feel, get them to see, then I've done about all that I can as a teacher.
W. Eugene Smith
#17. To became neighbours and friends instead of journalists. This is the way to make your finest photographs.
W. Eugene Smith
#19. The purpose of all art is to cause a deep and emotion, also one that is entertaining or pleasing. Out of the depth and entertainment comes value.
W. Eugene Smith
#20. With considerable soul searching, that to the utmost of my ability, I have let truth be the prejudice.
W. Eugene Smith
#21. In music I still prefer the minor key, and in printing I like the light coming from the dark. I like pictures that surmount the darkness, and many of my photographs are that way. It is the way I see photographically. For practical reasons, I think it looks better in print too.
W. Eugene Smith
#22. I've never made any picture, good or bad, without paying for it in emotional turmoil.
W. Eugene Smith
#23. I think photojournalism is documentary photography with a purpose.
W. Eugene Smith
#24. The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera.
W. Eugene Smith
#26. I am constantly torn between the attitude of the conscientious journalist who is a recorder and interpreter of the facts and of the creative artist who often is necessarily at poetic odds with the literal facts.
W. Eugene Smith
#27. The photographer must bear the responsibility for his work and its effect ... [for] photographic journalism, because of its tremendous audience reached by publications using it, has more influence on public thinking than any other branch of photography.
W. Eugene Smith
#28. Negatives are the notebooks, the jottings, the false starts, the whims, the poor drafts, and the good draft but never the completed version of the work The print and a proper one is the only completed photograph, whether it is specifically shaded for reproduction, or for a museum wall.
W. Eugene Smith
#29. I would that my photographs might be, not the coverage of a news event, but an indictment of war.
W. Eugene Smith
#30. What use having a great depth of field, if there is not an adequate depth of feeling?
W. Eugene Smith
#31. Most photographers seem to operate with a pane of glass between themselves and their subjects. They just can't get inside and know the subject.
W. Eugene Smith
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