Top Berenice Abbott Quotes - Quotesmemo.com

Berenice Abbott Biography

Berenice Abbott

Berenice Abbott (July 17, 1898 – December 9, 1991), née Bernice Alice Abbott, was an American photographer best known for her portraits of between-the-wars 20th-century cultural figures, New York City photographs of architecture and urban design of the 1930s, and science interpretation in the 1940s–1960s.

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Berenice Abbott Quotes

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.

Needs, Possess, Real, Simplifications, Structure, Surrounds

Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.

Grow, Growing Up, Medium, Photography, Walk, Walks

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 )

Art, Girl, Nice, Told

Let us first say what photography is not. A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. It is not just a pretty picture, not an exercise in contortionist techniques and sheer print quality. It is or should be a significant document, a penetrating statement, which can be described in a very simple term-selectivity.

Exercise, Penetrating, Photography, Poem, Significant, Simple

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.

Photography, Philosophy, Mean, Course, Like, Directly

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.

Drudgery, Ducks, Mountain, Photography, Water

Suppose we took a thousand negatives. . . combining the elegances, the squalor, the curiosities, the monuments, the sad faces, the triumphant faces, the power, the irony, the strength, the decay, the past, the present, the future of a city - that would be my favorite picture.

Cities, Combining, Curiosity, Past, Power, Present

Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.

Creative, Life, Mean, Photography, Sings, Song

Photography helps people to see.

Helping, People, Photography, See

I am so fascinated with this century it will help keep me alive. I'll be there until the last minute, fighting.

Alive, Fascinated, Fighting, Help, Keep, Lasts

I'm not a nice girl. I'm a photographer.

Girl, Nice, Photographer

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.

Bouncing, Challenge, Challenges, Cities, Portraits, See

I think the important decision for a photographer is to choose a subject that intensely interests him or her.

Choose, Decision, Important, Photographer, Think, Thinking

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.

Needs, Photographer, Photographers, World, Worst

There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.

Evolve, Inspirational, Pale, Ruins, Teacher, Teachers

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.

Eye, Philosophy, Reality, Selective

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.

Formed, Heads, Lenses, Quality, Representational, Use

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.

Composition, Construct, Help, Hurt, Self, Understanding

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.

Age, Photography, Ridiculous, Years

Imagine a world without photography, one could only imagine.

Imagine, Photographer, Photography, World

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