Top 34 Szarkowski Quotes
#1. I met and became close with John Szarkowski of the Museum of Modern Art. He was incredibly supportive about me working in color.
William Eggleston
#2. Pure photography is a system of picture-making that describes more or less faithfully what might be seen through a rectangular frame from a particular vantage point at a given moment.
John Szarkowski
#3. The goal is not to make something factually impeccable, but seamlessly persuasive.
John Szarkowski
#4. Most of Tina Modotti's work that is known to the photography world was done in Mexico in the years 1923 through 1926, when she lived and worked with Edward Weston.
John Szarkowski
#5. Trained as a musician, [photographer Ansel] Adams understood the richness of variation that could be unfolded from a simple theme.
John Szarkowski
#6. The very best pictures adapt themselves to many changes in meaning.
John Szarkowski
#7. Photography was not invented to serve a clearly understood function. There was in fact widespread uncertainty, even among its inventors, as to what it might be good for.
John Szarkowski
#8. I was more influenced by players like Randy Rhoads and Eddie Van Halen than by the guys in southern rock bands.
Dimebag Darrell
#9. Photography is a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. The contest can be held anywhere ...
John Szarkowski
#10. When I go into rehearsal rooms and meet with bands, they're genuinely excited to be with me because of what I've done as an artist, not because of anything else. There's that whole celebrity rock star thing, and artists are into artists who have been able to achieve success their way.
Nikki Sixx
#11. It isn't what a picture is of, it is what it is about.
John Szarkowski
#12. What's happening is that people are making a billion photographs a year of their cats, frequently with the cats wearing costumes. Do you think I should be doing shows of cat photography?
John Szarkowski
#13. The basic material of photographs is not intrinsically beautiful. It's not like ivory or tapestry or bronze or oil on canvas. You're not supposed to look at the thing, you're supposed to look through it. It's a window.
John Szarkowski
#14. They were ... pure and unadulterated photographs, and sometimes they hinted at the existence of visual truths that had escaped all other systems of detection.
John Szarkowski
#15. The central act of photography, the act of choosing and eliminating, forces a concentration on the picture edge - the line that separates in from out - and on the shapes that are created by it.
John Szarkowski
#16. To quote out of context is the essence of the photographer's craft.
John Szarkowski
#17. In practice a photographer does not concern himself with philosophical issues while working; he makes photographs, working with subject matter that he thinks will make the pictures.
John Szarkowski
#19. Because we see reality in different ways, we must understand that we are looking at different truths rather than the truth and that, therefore, all photographs lie in one way or another.
John Szarkowski
#20. Like an organism, photography was born whole. It is in our progressive discovery of it that its history lies.
John Szarkowski
#21. The simplicity of photography lies in the fact that it is very easy to make a picture. The staggering complexity of it lies in the fact that a thousand other pictures of the same subject would have been equally easy.
John Szarkowski
#22. And what it meant was we would be together for many more Christmas's because we truly loved each other, heart to heart. Not based on how we looked or how some of the things we do appear stupid to the other person but how we cared for each other. Deep down in our core.
E.Z. Friedel
#23. I recommend learning how to write a very good thank-you note. A child who can write a nice thank-you note can turn into a cocaine dealer five years later and be remembered as child who wrote nice thank-you notes.
Lemony Snicket
#24. A photographer's best work is, alas, generally done for himself.
John Szarkowski
#25. The photographer's vision convinces us to the degree that the photographer hides his hand.
John Szarkowski
#26. Photography's central sense of purpose and aesthetic: the precise and lucid description of significant fact.
John Szarkowski
#28. Photography is the easiest thing in the world if one is willing to accept pictures that are flaccid, limp, bland, banal, indiscriminately informative, and pointless. But if one insists in a photograph that is both complex and vigorous it is almost impossible
John Szarkowski
#29. People used to recordings believed every piece of music had a definitive sound, its emotional context trapped in amber, a butterfly pinned to a board; beautiful, but dead. Live music was just that. Alive.
Tanya Huff
#31. Because I'm so big, you have to look at me. I think of myself as a monument. But sometimes I like to feel small.
Shaquille O'Neal
#32. I love family reunions. Maybe next year we could pass out samurai swords.
Doug Solter
#33. The world now contains more photographs than bricks, and they are, astonishingly, all different.
John Szarkowski
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