John Divola Quotes & Sayings

It's good to be around people who see [photography] as a reasonable enterprise when everyone in the neighborhood may think it's ridiculous. (On the benefit of teaching photography) — John Divola

In all my work there's this notion of the melancholic. You can make a photograph about the sublime, but you can't make the sublime itself. — John Divola

The photograph as an object has a relationship to that which it represents something like the relationship the snake skin has to the snake that sheds it. — John Divola

To photograph is often compared to an act of redemption - to select from an infinite number of choices that which is to be remembered. — John Divola

I really don't worry too much about what I see through the viewfinder, at least not at that point, especially if I'm using a flash because I don't know what it's going to do. I just see vague potentiality. It's really working with a set of attributes that will hopefully interact in an interesting way. — John Divola

I don't look for things to see how they function as metaphors ... You can't photograph the sublime. You can only traffic in the specific and its relationship to the symbolic. — John Divola