Whitney Otto Quotes & Sayings

All you have to go on is the faith of a kiss. — Whitney Otto

Amadora was never far from her understanding of women, glamour, or the fine line between elegant and camp, vulgar and vibrant, life and dreams ... Color, she believed, was feminine. She said that women were masters of color, evidenced in changing their hair color, using eye shadow, mascara, powder, rouge, lipstick. You could see it in their jewelry- silvers and golds, gems, stones, pearls of every hue. It was in their clothing, from what they slept in to what they danced in. Their shoes. Their purses. Ribbons, barrettes, clips, and tiaras. Veils. All this color to enhance their sex appeal, while men, she felt, were ill-equipped to handle color with the same ease. — Whitney Otto

Don't panic. If you write, you'll be a writer. — Whitney Otto

That is the true challenge
to work within a narrow confine. To accept what you cannot have; that from which you cannot deviate. — Whitney Otto

... that would be too much like running away, and that, she would not do. She does not run - they cannot make her - she walks. — Whitney Otto

While she was in transit, being unattached was exhilarating, but the moment she stopped, so did the high. — Whitney Otto

If the photographer isn't going to pay attention to the picture he is making, that if he thinks the camera is just a machine and not an avenue of expression, then he has no business asking anyone for anything, let alone their time and interest. Don't show the world, he said, invent the world. — Whitney Otto

I never think anyone in love is foolish. We do the best we can. — Whitney Otto

Later, Jenny would say she seldom knew what she would take a picture of when she picked up a camera, that she only knew once she peered through the viewfinder, as if the photograph had finally found her. — Whitney Otto

Among the things she said: Women seem to possess all the natural gifts essential to a good portraitist ... such as personality, patience and intuition. The sitter ought to be the predominating factor in a successful portrait. Men portraitist are apt to forget this; they are inclined to lose the sitter in a maze of technique luxuriating in the cleverness and beauty of their own medium. — Whitney Otto

Money buys things that people with money never even realize they've bought, like time and freedom.
Whitney Otto — Whitney Otto

I have an affection for those transitional seasons, the way they take the edge off the intense cold of winter, or heat of summer. — Whitney Otto

She believed, as others did, that a camera was good for more than recording the world. A photograph wasn't a response to something; it was something. — Whitney Otto

The images enhanced, then negated each other. Nothing was fixed. Nothing is any one thing really, and isn't that the beauty of it all? — Whitney Otto

All this because one race did not have the decency to be ashamed of dealing in human flesh. — Whitney Otto

No one knows how another person feels in private. — Whitney Otto

You have to choose your combinations careful. The right choices will enhance your quilt. The wrong choices will dull the colors and hide their original beauty. There are no rules you can follow. You have to go by instinct and you have to be brave. — Whitney Otto

Berlin was charismatic in the roguish way of a love ... It was a lover who was a little dangerous in ways that didn't always show, keeping you a bit on edge, a bit in love and endlessly forgiving because he made her feel that she was exactly where she was meant to be ... Berlin made you like who you were when you were there, as if everything worth being a part of in the world - all those modern ideas about sex and art and women; all that possibility - was right there, in its dark, beating heart. — Whitney Otto

Read "The Story of O." Convince yourself that it was in fact written by a woman or someone who thinks like a woman. — Whitney Otto

It was hard not to feel resentment that men weren't forced into these choices. Some days she felt that she would spend all her time trying to forget her life before children because she loved them too much to be reminded of the heat of Rome in the summer and a beautiful girl who turned heads as she walked down an Italian strada. — Whitney Otto

... brotherhood of the firstborn, which can be both a blessing and a curse: the overwhelming attention to the detail of their lives and development. The expectations that run too high: being the bridge between adults and children, one foot in either place and the accompanying hollow lonely feeling of being nowhere. — Whitney Otto

Why are old lovers able to become friends? Two reasons. They never truly loved each other, or they love each other still. — Whitney Otto

But any picture could deal with the problem of light. The problem with this picture is greater than that of reflective surfaces - it's one of death. You invite a profound theme into your work when you choose cut flowers. You are talking about mortality and time moving forward. You are saying that everything, everything we see and experience and love happens uniquely and happens only once. When you take a picture of a flower in a glass you are, paradoxically, capturing evanescence. You are also showing the indifference of Nature. There is no mourning in a flower photograph, only a shrugging of the shoulders. — Whitney Otto

I once started out
to walk around the world
but ended up with you.
Thank God. — Whitney Otto

If I photograph you in the shadows, you become mysterious, perhaps unknowable. If I light you from above, so your eyelashes throw shadows on your cheeks, you could be a Hollywood film star. — Whitney Otto

HIM THE ONLY REASON TO GO TO SCHOOL!!! <3 — Whitney Otto

The worst dream of the night, when you are parted from someone you love and you do not know exactly where he is, but you know that he is in the presence of danger. You are tormented by a desire to keep the one you love safe. — Whitney Otto

But she never knew what it was like to walk away from the thing she had most wanted. Years later she would say, Photography allowed me to make the world and be in the world. — Whitney Otto

What no one tells you about having children is that it isn't tbe physical demand thry make in your life that affects your art, it's the emotional space they fill, crowding out your art. So even when you have the time to work, you're still mentally occupied. — Whitney Otto

Once you love, you cannot take it back, cannot undo it; what you felt may have changed, shifted slightly, yet still remains love. You still feel-though very small-the not-altogether unpleasant shock of soul recognition for that person. — Whitney Otto

She is admired from afar. These admirers court her in secret, in the safety of their dreams. — Whitney Otto

The truly terrible thing about this life, was not knowing what you want, but only able to recognize what you do not want. You have to spend so much time and energy trying to find it out, time that other people spent in pursuing of their desires. — Whitney Otto

Think about what binds you to your husband and he to you. Marvel at the strength of that bond, which is both abstract and concrete, spiritual and legal. — Whitney Otto

S_ likes being around other people; she just isn't particularly comfortable talking to them. She supposes that she is some variety of voyeur, enjoying the spectacle, breathing in the atmosphere, while experiencing uneasiness when asked to become part of it. None of this makes her unhappy. The life of a wallflower, she often thinks, is not such a terrible life. — Whitney Otto

These things are not glorified, just recorded. Tattooed on the heart; burned into the family's history. This piecing together of the life of your child; this homage, this attempt to put it all in order; and even though you will one day wish for the heartbreak to leave you, it never will. — Whitney Otto

HIM THE ONLY REASON TO GO TO SCHOOL!!! — Whitney Otto

She remembered her fingers threaded through his hair and his kisses in places that made her long for him years later. — Whitney Otto

... she eventually forgave him, because she understood him. — Whitney Otto

No one fights dirtier or more brutally than blood; only family knows it's own weaknesses, the exact placement of the heart. The tragedy is that one can still live with the force of hatred, feel infuriated that once you are born to another, that kinship lasts through life and death, immutable, unchanging, no matter how great the misdeed or betrayal. Blood cannot be denied, and perhaps that's why we fight tooth and claw, because we cannot - being only human - put asunder what God has joined together. — Whitney Otto