I'm not a nice girl; I'm a photographer. (On being told by a Federal Art Project official, after she photographed the Bowery, that a nice girl should not go into such neighborhoods ) Berenice Abbott More Quotes by Berenice Abbott More Quotes From Berenice Abbott The photograph may be presented as finely and artistically as you will; but to merit serious consideration, must be directly connected with the world we live in. Berenice Abbott merit may world I took to photography like a duck to water. I never wanted to do anything else. Excitement about the subject is the voltage which pushes me over the mountain of drudgery necessary to produce the final photograph. Berenice Abbott ducks photography water The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is. Berenice Abbott preservation cameras photographer None. They should just go out and photograph and stop talking about it. That's the only way they are going to find themselves. They can't do it in their heads - they have to go out and do it in the camera and get it on film. Berenice Abbott cameras talking way The challenge for me has first been to see things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing ball. In a word, I have tried to be objective. What I mean by objectivity is not the objectivity of a machine, but of a sensible human being with the mystery of personal selection at the heart of it. The second challenge has been to impose order onto the things seen and to supply the visual context and the intellectual framework - that to me is the art of photography. Berenice Abbott photography mean art The art is in selecting what is worthwhile to take the trouble about. Berenice Abbott photographer trouble art You scientists are the worst photographers in the world and you need the best photographers in the world and I'm the one to do it. Berenice Abbott photographer world needs Actually, documentary pictures include every subject in the world - good, bad, indifferent. I have yet to see a fine photograph which is not a good document. Berenice Abbott documentaries photographer world I wanted to combine science and photography in a sensible, unemotional way. Some people’s ideas of scientific photography is just arty design, something pretty. That was not the idea. The idea was to interpret science sensibly, with good proportion, good balance and good lighting, so we could understand it. Berenice Abbott photography people ideas To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it. The photographer creates, evolves a better, a more selective, more acute seeing eye by looking ever more sharply at what is going on in the world. Berenice Abbott eye philosophy reality I think the important decision for a photographer is to choose a subject that intensely interests him or her. Berenice Abbott important decision thinking What we need of equipment is this: let it possess as good a structure as the real-life content that surrounds us. We need more simplifications to free us for seeing. Berenice Abbott structure real needs If a medium is representational by nature of the realistic image formed by a lens, I see no reason why we should stand on our heads to distort that function. On the contrary, we should take hold of that very quality, make use of it, and explore it to the fullest. Berenice Abbott lenses quality use I'm not a nice girl. I'm a photographer. Berenice Abbott nice girl photographer Abstraction in photography is ridiculous, and is only an imitation of painting. We stopped imitating painters a hundred years ago, so to imitate them in this day and age is laughable. Berenice Abbott photography age years Self-conscious artiness is fatal, but it certainly would not hurt to study composition in general. Having a basic understanding of composition would help construct a better organized image. Berenice Abbott understanding hurt self Photography was the medium preeminently qualified to unite art with science. Photography was born in the years which ushered in the scientific age, an offspring of both science and art. Berenice Abbott photography years art To chart a course, one must have a direction. In reality, the eye is no better than the philosophy behind it. The photographer creates, evolves a better, more selective, more acute eye by looking ever more sharply at what is going on in the world. Like every other means of expression, photography, if it is to be utterly honest and direct, should be related to the life of the times-the pulse of today. The photograph may be presented as finely and artistically as you will, but to merit serious consideration, must be directly connected with the world we live in. Berenice Abbott photography philosophy mean What to me is anathema - a corpse-like, outmoded hangover - is for photography to be a bad excuse for another medium. ... Is not photography good enough in itself, that it must be made to look like something else, supposedly superior? Berenice Abbott hangover photography looks The lens freezes time and space in what may be an optical slavery or, contrarily, the crystallization of meaning. The limits of the lens' vision are esthetically often a virtue. Berenice Abbott vision space photography