Each time I make a photograph I celebrate the life I love and the beauty I know and the happiness I have experienced. All my photographs are made like that responding to my intuition... After all these years, I am still motivated by the radiance that light creates when it transforms an object into something magical. What the eye sees is an illusion of what is real. The black-and-white image is yet another transformation. What exactly exists, we may never know.

Ruth Bernhard

Categorized in : Real Eye Black And White

The ground we walk on, the plants and creatures, the clouds above constantly dissolving into new formations - each gift of nature possessing its own radiant energy, bound together by cosmic harmony.

Ruth Bernhard

nature together clouds

If you are not passionately devoted to an idea, you can make very pleasant pictures but they won't make you cry.

Ruth Bernhard

photography photographer ideas

Woman has been the target of much that is sordid and cheap, especially in photography. To raise, to elevate, to endorse with timeless reverence the image of woman, has been my mission.

Ruth Bernhard

target photography photographer

Light is my inspiration, my paint and brush. It is as vital as the model herself. Profoundly significant, it caresses the essential superlative curves and lines. Light I acknowledge as the energy upon which all life on this planet depends.

Ruth Bernhard

curves photography inspiration

If you are not willing to see more than is visible, you won't see anything.

Ruth Bernhard

willing photography photographer

Fall in love. Every day. With everything. With life. If you can fall in love, you can be a photographer. I think that is absolutely essential.

Ruth Bernhard

falling-in-love photography love-you

It is so basic. A human being is an innocent part of nature. Our civilization has distorted this universal quality that allows us to feel at home in our skin. Other animals have coats that they accept, but the human race has yet to come to terms with being nude.

Ruth Bernhard

race home animal

For me, the creation of a photograph is experienced as a heightened emotional response, most akin to poetry and music, each image the culmination of a compelling impulse I cannot deny. Whether working with a human figure or a still life, I am deeply aware of my spiritual connection with it. In my life, as in my work, I am motivated by a great yearning for balance and harmony beyond the realm of human experience, reaching for the essence of oneness with the Universe.

Ruth Bernhard

emotional photography spiritual

Light is my inspiration. My photographic images search for dimensions that words cannot touch- the result of intense responses to personal experiences. I do not wish to "record," but rather to touch upon the illusive meanings which I perceive and try to comprehend in this limitless universe.

Ruth Bernhard

light photography inspiration

Every day I am aware of the flow and constant change; perhaps I am at the edge of discovering what more our bodies might be able to teach about the spirit of life. At least, I am always exploring and trying to understand our relationship to the whole universe.

Ruth Bernhard

body photography trying

A person cannot learn to be a photographer. He can only cultivate what he already has. I try to make people aware that they have something very precious to cultivate.

Ruth Bernhard

photography trying people

I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help.

Ruth Bernhard

insightful photography photographer

If youre not interested in life, then photography has no meaning

Ruth Bernhard

not-interested photography photographer

There is no such thing as taking too much time, because your soul is in that picture.

Ruth Bernhard

too-much photography soul

If you can't make the image bigger or more important than what you see, then don't push the button

Ruth Bernhard

buttons important photography

Remember God likes us best when we are flying by the seats of our pants.

Ruth Bernhard

pants flying likes

Never ever say the word shoot when you are taking a picture with a camera because a camera is not a violent weapon.

Ruth Bernhard

cameras weapons photography

What the human eye sees is an illusion of what is real. The black and white image transforms illusions into another reality.

Ruth Bernhard

eye photography real

#1 Never Get Used to Anything.

Ruth Bernhard

used change life

There is nothing unimportant in the universe.

Ruth Bernhard

unimportant universe