31+ Paul Strand Quotes On Art, Photography And Documentary

Paul Strand was an American photographer who was a major figure in the history of photography. He was a pioneer of modernist photography and was known for his black and white images of natural and urban landscapes. He was a leader of the Photo-Secession movement in the early 20th century and his work is considered to be among the most influential in the history of photography. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Paul Strand on art, photography, love.

Top 10 Paul Strand Quotes

1. Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees.
2. It is one thing to photograph people. It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their humanness.
3. The artist's world is limitless. It can be found anywhere, far from where he lives or a few feet away. It is always on his doorstep.
4. If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own, you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph.
5. All good art is abstract in its structure.
6. Objectivity is of the very essence of photography, its contribution and at the same time its limitation
7. Photography... is either an expression of a cosmic vision, an embodiment of a life movement or it is nothing - to me. (1919)
8. I like to photograph people who have strength and dignity in their faces. Whatever life has done to them, it hasn’t destroyed them.
9. Photography is only a new road from a different direction, but moving toward the common goal, which is life.
10. I think of myself as an explorer who has spent his life on a long voyage of discovery.

Paul Strand Short Quotes

• If Ansel Adams gets a thousand dollars a print, I want ten thousand.
• All light is available light.
• To be a photographer you must have something to say about the world.

Paul Strand Quotes About Photography

I don't care how you photograph - use the kitchen mop if you must, but if the product is not true to the laws of photography... you have produced something that is dead. (1923) — Paul Strand

Every artist I suppose has a sense of what they think has been the importance of their work. But to ask them to define it is not really a fair question. My real answer would be, the answer is on the wall. — Paul Strand

The important thing is, you have to have something important to say about the world. — Paul Strand

Did I express my personality? I think that's quite unimportant because it's not people's selves but what they have to say about life that's important. — Paul Strand

I've always wanted to be aware of what's going on around me, and I've wanted to use photography as an instrument of research into and reporting on the life of my own time. — Paul Strand

Paul Strand Quotes About Artist

The artist is one who makes a concentrated statement about the world in which he lives and that statement tends to become impersonal-it tends to become universal and enduring because it comes out of something very particular. — Paul Strand

The decision as to when to photograph, the actual click of the shutter, is partly controlled from the outside, by the flow of life, but it also comes from the mind and the heart of the artist. The photograph is his vision of the world and expresses, however subtly, his values and convictions. — Paul Strand

If the photographer is not a discoverer, then he is not an artist. — Paul Strand

Paul Strand Famous Quotes And Sayings

The portrait of a person is one of the most difficult things to do. It means you must almost bring the presence of that person photographed to other people in such a way that they don't have to know that person personally, but that they are still confronted with a human being that they won't forget. That's a portrait. — Paul Strand

Whether a watercolor is inferior to an oil [painting], or whether a drawing, an etching, or a photograph is not as important as either, is inconsequent. To have to despise something in order to respect something else is a sign of impotence. — Paul Strand

It is easy to make a picture of someone and call it a portrait. The difficulty lies in making a picture that makes the viewer care about a stranger. — Paul Strand

I read the other day that Minor White said it takes twenty years to become a photographer. I think that is a bit of an exaggeration. I would say, judging from myself, that it takes at least eight or nine years. But it does not take any longer than it takes to learn to play the piano or the violin. If it takes twenty years, you might as well forget about it! — Paul Strand

The photographer's problem is to see clearly the limitations and at the same time the potential qualities of his medium, for it is precisely here that honesty no less than intensity of vision is the pre-requisite of a living expression. The fullest realization of this is accomplished without tricks of process or manipulation, through the use of straight photographic methods. — Paul Strand

No matter what lens you use, no matter what speed the film, no matter how you develop it, no matter how you print it, you cannot say more than you can see. — Paul Strand

The camera machine cannot evade the objects which are in front of it. When the photographer selects this movement, the light, the objects, he must be true to them. If he includes in his space a strip of grass, it must be felt as the living differentiated thing it is and so recorded. It must take its proper but no less important place as a shape and a texture in relationship to the mountain tree or what not, which are included. — Paul Strand

Look at the things around you, the immediate world around you. If you are alive, it will mean something to you, and if you care enough about photography, and if you know how to use it, you will want to photograph that meaningness. If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own, you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph. — Paul Strand

Cartier-Bresson has said that photography seizes a 'decisive moment', that's true except that it shouldn't be taken too narrowly...does my picture of a cobweb in the rain represent a decisive moment? The exposure time was probably three or four minutes. That's a pretty long moment. I would say the decisive moment in that case was the moment in which I saw this thing and decided I wanted to photograph it. — Paul Strand

And if you can find out something about the laws of your own growth and vision as well as those of photography you may be able to relate the two, create an object that has a life of its own, which transcends craftsmanship. That is a long road, and because it must be your own road nobody can teach it to you or find it for you. There are no shortcuts, no rules. — Paul Strand

Life Lessons by Paul Strand

1. Paul Strand's work emphasizes the importance of capturing the everyday moments of life, as well as the beauty of the natural world.
2. He also taught us to look at the world around us with a more creative eye, and to appreciate the beauty of the ordinary.
3. His work also serves as a reminder that photography can be used to make powerful statements about the world we live in.