I've never made any picture, good or bad, without paying for it in emotional turmoil. W. Eugene Smith More Quotes by W. Eugene Smith More Quotes From W. Eugene Smith 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 groups voice photography 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 umpires distance photography Hardening of the categories causes art disease. W. Eugene Smith disease causes art The world just does not fit conveniently into the format of a 35mm camera. W. Eugene Smith cameras photography travel Passion is in all great searches and is necessary to all creative endeavors. W. Eugene Smith passion attitude peace I didn’t write the rules. Why would I follow them? W. Eugene Smith photographer writing What use having a great depth of field, if there is not an adequate depth of feeling? W. Eugene Smith depth use feelings 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 teaching teacher thinking I try to take what voice I have and I give it to those who don’t have one at all. W. Eugene Smith voice trying giving 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 honest photographer impossible 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 understanding trying giving 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 wall museums art ...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 echoes men years 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 keys dark thinking Available light is any damn light that is available! W. Eugene Smith light photography photographer I think photojournalism is documentary photography with a purpose. W. Eugene Smith photography purpose thinking 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 wall notebook museums 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 odds artist attitude My camera, my intentions stopped no man from falling. Nor did they aid him after he had fallen. It could be said that photographs be damned for they bind no wounds. Yet, I reasoned, if my photographs could cause compassionate horror within the viewer, they might also prod the conscience of that viewer into taking action. W. Eugene Smith might men fall I was after a set of pictures, so that when people looked at them they would say, ‘This is war’-that the people who were in the war would believe that I had truthfully captured what they had gone through I worked in the framework that war is horrible. I want to carry on what I have tried to do in these pictures. War is a concentrated unit in the world and these things are clearly and cleanly seen. Things like race prejudice, poverty, hatred and bigotry are sprawling things in civilian life, and not so easy to define as war. W. Eugene Smith race war believe
