Dorothea Lange Quotes & Sayings

We know by now how to photograph poor people. What we don't know is how to photograph affluence - whose other face is poverty. — Dorothea Lange

To know ahead of time what you're looking for means you're then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting, and often false. — Dorothea Lange

No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually. — Dorothea Lange

Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit. — Dorothea Lange

Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion ... the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate. — Dorothea Lange

The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects. — Dorothea Lange

I many times encountered courage, real courage. Undeniable courage. I've heard it said that that was the highest quality of the human animal. I encountered that many times, in unexpected places. And I have learned to recognize it when I see it. — Dorothea Lange

When you are doing a lot of hard fast field work, it's a physical necessity to forget every day. You can't try to remember it in any continuity. You get so burdened if you try to do it the other way. You can't dictate to your material ... We found our way in, slid in on the edges. We used our hunches. And it was hard, hard living. — Dorothea Lange

Being disabled gave me an immense advantage. People are kinder to you. It puts you on a different level than if you go into a situation whole and secure. — Dorothea Lange

It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer. — Dorothea Lange

While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see. — Dorothea Lange

Bring the viewer to your side, include him in your thought. He is not a bystander. You have the power to increase his perceptions and conceptions. — Dorothea Lange

Artists are controlled by the life that beats in them, like the ocean beats on the shore. — Dorothea Lange

One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you'd be stricken blind. — Dorothea Lange

You know there are moments such as these when time stands still and all you do is hold your breath and hope it will wait for you. — Dorothea Lange

A camera teaches you how to see without a camera. — Dorothea Lange

Ours is a time of the machine, and ours is a need to know that the machine can be put to creative human effort. If not, the machine can destroy us. — Dorothea Lange

The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. — Dorothea Lange

This benefit of seeing ... can come only if you pause a while, extricate yourself from the maddening mob of quick impressions ceaselessly battering our lives, and look thoughtfully at a quiet image ... the viewer must be willing to pause, to look again, to meditate. — Dorothea Lange

The best way to go into an unknown territory is to go in ignorant, ignorant as possible, with your mind wide open, as wide open as possible and not having to meet anyone else's requirement but your own. — Dorothea Lange

Photography today appears to be in a state of flight ... The familiar is made strange, the unfamiliar grotesque. The amateur forces his Sundays into a series of unnatural poses. — Dorothea Lange

A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph. — Dorothea Lange

A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera. — Dorothea Lange

Photographers stop photographing a subject too soon before they have exhausted the possibilities. — Dorothea Lange

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still. — Dorothea Lange

I had to get my camera to register things that were more important than how poor they were
their pride, their strength, their spirit. — Dorothea Lange

The words that come direct from the people are the greatest ... If you substitute one out of your own vocabulary, it disappears before your eyes. — Dorothea Lange

It is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque. — Dorothea Lange

Life, for people, begins to crumble on the edges; they don't realize it. — Dorothea Lange

Seeing is more than a physiological phenomenon ... We see not only with our eyes but with all that we are and all that our culture is. The artist is a professional see-er. — Dorothea Lange

It came to me that what I had to do was to take pictures and concentrate upon people, only people, all kinds of people, people who paid me and people who didn't. — Dorothea Lange

Photography is a lot like telling a large predatory cat what to do-while an audience of people you can't see watches you. — Dorothea Lange

The people who are garrulous and wear their heart on their sleeve and tell you everything, that's one kind of person, but the fellow who's hiding behind a tree and hoping you don't see him is the fellow that you'd better find out why. — Dorothea Lange

I realize more and more what it takes to be a really good photographer. You go in over your head, not just up to your neck. — Dorothea Lange

I believe that what we call beautiful is generally a by-product. — Dorothea Lange

To me, beauty appears when one feels deeply, and art is an act of total attention, — Dorothea Lange

The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. — Dorothea Lange

That frame of mind that you need to make fine pictures of a very wonderful subject, you cannot do it by not being lost yourself. — Dorothea Lange

I've never not been sure that I was a photographer any more than you would not be sure you were yourself. I was a photographer, or wanting to be a photographer, or beginning - but some phase of photographer I've always been. — Dorothea Lange

I believe in living with the camera, and not using the camera. — Dorothea Lange