Paul Strand Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

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

Objectivity is of the very essence of photography, its contribution and at the same time its limitation — 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

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

It has always been my belief that the true artist, like the true scientist, is a researcher using materials and techniques to dig into the truth and meaning of the world in which he himself lives; and what he creates, or better perhaps, brings back, are the objective results of his explorations. The measure of his talent
of his genius, if you will
is the richness he finds in such a life's voyage of discovery and the effectiveness with which he is able to embody it through his chosen medium. — Paul Strand

Your photography is a record of your living, for anyone who really sees. — Paul Strand

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

If Ansel Adams gets a thousand dollars a print, I want ten thousand. — 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

All good art is abstract in its structure. — 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

It is one thing to photograph people. It is another to make others care about them by revealing the core of their humanness. — Paul Strand

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

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

I like to photograph people who have strength and dignity in their faces. Whatever life has done to them, it hasn't destroyed them. — Paul Strand

All light is available light. — Paul Strand

The existence of a medium, after all, is its absolute justification, if as so many seem to think, it needs one and all comparison of potentialities is useless and irrelevant. Whether a water-color is inferior to an oil, 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. [emphasis added] Let us rather accept joyously and with gratitude everything through which the spirit of man seeks to an ever fuller and more intense self-realization. — 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

Photography ... is either an expression of a cosmic vision, an embodiment of a life movement or it is nothing - to me. (1919) — Paul Strand

The documentary photographer aims his camera at the real world to record truthfulness. At the same time, he must strive for form, to devise effective ways of organizing and using the material. For content and form are interrelated. The problems presented by content and form must be so developed that the result is fundimentally [sic] true to the realities of life as we know it. The chief problem is to find a form that adequately represents the reality. — Paul Strand

I think of myself as an explorer who has spent his life on a long voyage of discovery. — Paul Strand

To be a photographer you must have something to say about the world. — 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 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

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

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

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. — Paul Strand

Photography is only a new road from a different direction, but moving toward the common goal, which is life. — Paul Strand