Top 34 Eugene Smith Quotes
#1. The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera.
W. Eugene Smith
#3. 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
#4. With considerable soul searching, that to the utmost of my ability, I have let truth be the prejudice.
W. Eugene Smith
#5. 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
#6. I've never made any picture, good or bad, without paying for it in emotional turmoil.
W. Eugene Smith
#7. What, after all, is mathematics but the poetry of the mind, and what is poetry but the mathematics of the heart?
David Eugene Smith
#8. What would mathematics have amounted to without the imagination of its devotees-its giants and their followers? There never was a discovery made without the urge of imagination-of imagination which broke the roadway through the forest in order that cold logic might follow.
David Eugene Smith
#9. I think photojournalism is documentary photography with a purpose.
W. Eugene Smith
#10. To became neighbours and friends instead of journalists. This is the way to make your finest photographs.
W. Eugene Smith
#12. 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
#13. 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
#14. 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
#15. I would that my photographs might be, not the coverage of a news event, but an indictment of war.
W. Eugene Smith
#16. What use having a great depth of field, if there is not an adequate depth of feeling?
W. Eugene Smith
#17. 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
#19. 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
#20. Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors.
W. Eugene Smith
#21. MR. SMITH: Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. [Silence.]
MR. MARTIN: Don't you feel well? [Silence.]
MRS. SMITH: No, he's wet his pants. [Silence.]
MRS. MARTIN: Oh, sir, at your age, you shouldn't. [Silence.]
MR. SMITH: The heart is ageless. [Silence.]
Eugene Ionesco
#22. 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
#23. 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
#25. 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
#26. 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
#27. 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
#28. 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
#29. The first word I would remove from the folklore of journalism is the word objective.
W. Eugene Smith
#30. 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
#33. I try to take what voice I have and I give it to those who don't have one at all.
W. Eugene Smith
#34. 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
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