Caponigro Paul Quotes & Sayings

Photography extends our perception allowing us to see and experience more - second hand. — John Paul Caponigro

Mysterious spaces cause us to turn inward. Amid a rich upwelling of association, we encounter many aspects of ourselves. As we grow still, we come in contact with a unified, empty, yet full ground of our being. As our consciousness grows more spacious, we find connections between us and the wider world, a shared greater reality. — John Paul Caponigro

Seek freedom within action. — Paul Caponigro

Very often there is too little information in photographs to deduce how they were made and even what they represent. We rely on context and supplemental information to confirm our observations, not simply the documents themselves. — John Paul Caponigro

Photography is not easy. You know it takes a painter or a sculpture or a musician years to perfect their technique. Then they're free to make an expression in a matter of moments. It takes moments for a photographer to perfect his technique. And then it takes years for him to make it into something that is truly creative and worthwhile. — Paul Caponigro

Photography is much more about elimination than inclusion. The images we make with a lens typically eliminate ninety percent of our field of view and everything that is out of our field of view. The shutter slices time, eliminating all moments before and after it opens and closes. Three dimensions are reduced to two. And in some cases color is removed. How can we call these kinds of artifacts unaltered? — John Paul Caponigro

At the root of creativity is an impulse to understand, to make sense of random and often unrelated details. For me, photography provides an intersection of time, space, light, and emotional stance. One needs to be still enough, observant enough, and aware enough to recognize the life of the materials, to be able to 'hear through the eyes'. — Paul Caponigro

The act of creation, making anything, is an alteration. We cannot eliminate the medium or ourselves from the process, and both are limited. We create decisive moments by devoting our time and attention to specific things. This is the greatest gift we can give anyone or anything - pieces of our life. — John Paul Caponigro

Don't ask 'Should I ... ?'. Instead, 'Ask what happens if I ... ?' — John Paul Caponigro

Every photograph is altered, to one degree or another. — John Paul Caponigro

All that I have achieved are these dreams locked in silver. — Paul Caponigro

Above all, remember that the computer simply isn't as intelligent as you are. — John Paul Caponigro

The computer is a tool akin to a telescope or a microscope; a tool that opens vast frontiers of possibilities and brings them to light; a tool that captures the elemental and animates or holds it still at will; a tool that captures the organic flow of the earth's crust or the wash of a wave, and creates an impossible symmetry, an elemental Rorshach pattern ripe for continued exploration, divulging a thousand revelations. — John Paul Caponigro

Work incessantly, cultivate discrimination, gather freedom from your own hard-earned results. Disregard successes but go back for help in an immediate problem. The possibility of discovery is everywhere. Freedom from your own work allows for intuition that draws from all your experience and perception but goes beyond it. — Paul Caponigro

Different people can photograph the same things with the same tools and create such different images. — John Paul Caponigro

To be sure, not all moments are equally fleeting. Some moments last longer than others. And certain events do reoccur more than once and even recur repeatedly. Sometimes you do get more than one chance. Sometimes you don't. It helps to know how long a window of opportunity you have and if you'll get another chance. — John Paul Caponigro

Art is a journey of discovery. — John Paul Caponigro

The only way a work of art can become great is for one to acknowledge that it doesn't belong to anybody. The greatness is in constantly giving back, coming to an acknowledgment of the source. Look back to the source of any individual, any process, any set of materials. If the individual personality can relinquish its insistence on concepts like this is mine, I did it, this is original, nobody else has done it, it goes straight for greatness or the essential spirit. — Paul Caponigro

As far as my experience goes one is automatically in touch with the higher spiritual, it is connected to a certain level that interpenetrates our total physical and psychic existence. We are always in touch with it. — Paul Caponigro

The primary mode of experiencing images is non-verbal ... but once it's brought out into the light of the day, what's understood by the subconscious intuitive mind can be better grasped by the conscious rational mind. Aligning the two produces powerful results. — John Paul Caponigro

The frame frames a frame of mind. — John Paul Caponigro

How do we know what we know? Is seeing believing? Is believing seeing? — John Paul Caponigro

Many times we are tempted to defer to the documents we create, rather than the direct experiences we have. — John Paul Caponigro

Visual artists choreograph dances for the eyes, guiding visual journeys in specific ways. But when presented with little or nothing, the journeys of the eyes become erratic and finally still their restless searching. The eye and mind and heart grow quiet, come to rest, and begin to understand their own functioning more deeply. — John Paul Caponigro

The best plans evolve. — John Paul Caponigro

Amid countless everyday miracles, I come in contact with something greater than myself and realize I am a part of it ... I move in wonder through inspiration, reverence, gratitude, interconnectedness, transcendence, and grace. — John Paul Caponigro

It takes asking many questions from many perspectives to truly understand something. — John Paul Caponigro

We are the strongest filter we can place before the lens. We point the lens both outward and inward. — John Paul Caponigro

A photograph is an invitation to look - and to look at looking. — John Paul Caponigro

The key is to not let the camera, which depicts nature in so much detail, reveal just what the eye picks up, but what the heart picks up as well. — Paul Caponigro

In my years of photography I have learned that many things can be sensed, seen, shaped, or resolved in a realm of quiet, well in advance of, or between, the actual clicking of shutters and the sloshing of films and papers in chemical solutions. I work to attain a state of heart, a gentle space offering inspirational substance that could purify one's vision. Photography, like music, must be born in the unmanifest world of the spirit. — Paul Caponigro

Through the experience of art, the powers of perception and transformation can be awakened, in both those who create it and those who re-perceive it. — John Paul Caponigro

My mantra is, 'This or something better.' — John Paul Caponigro

It's important that we regularly reconsider, revise, and expand our practices, as our capabilities and needs evolve, both to strengthen our understanding of them and to promote our awareness of new practices and their conscientious uses. — John Paul Caponigro

I often see the materials of photography as being a type of terrain. Emulsions, liquid developers, silver salts, and fixers interact, and I construct a landscape that I need to first explore in my mind's eye if I am to make it manifest as an artful image in silver. — Paul Caponigro

Education, or enrichment, is a dynamic, evolving, lifelong process. Every time you look, sensitively with awareness, your vision grows. — John Paul Caponigro

Photography's potential as a great image-maker and communicator is really no different from the same potential in the best poetry where familiar, everyday words, placed within a special context, can soar above the intellect and touch subtle reality in a unique way. — Paul Caponigro

Surfaces reveal so much. The marks painters make reveal so much about their work and themselves; their sense of proportion, line, and rhythm is more telling than their signature. Looking at the surfaces of nature may offer equivalent revelations. What do these shapes and patterns reveal about the world and their creator? Surfaces hide so much ... — John Paul Caponigro

Under all of the factors that make up the art world, it's up to the individual artist to discern which of those influences are present and at what time and what really serves the deeper process that is constantly running like a stream underground. Influence is incessant. Influence is a fact. But, carry a big shovel and dig constantly to clear away all the unessentials so that the origins of mystery and the poetic force of life can get into and inspire the work. — Paul Caponigro

The influence of mystery is the greatest influence. — Paul Caponigro

A good question has many answers. — John Paul Caponigro

We see the world through our experience. — John Paul Caponigro

Inquiry is more important than answers, for it is the questions we ask and the way in which we ask them that defines us. — John Paul Caponigro

I work to attain a 'state of heart', a gentle space offering inspirational substance that could purify one's vision. Photography, like music, must be born in the unmanifest world of spirit. — Paul Caponigro

Surfaces simultaneously reveal and conceal. — John Paul Caponigro

We talk about the vulnerability involved in sharing our work publicly. I don't think we talk enough about the real vulnerability involved in making art; if we truly engage the process we are changed by it. — John Paul Caponigro

Can you keep your balance? Can you see what and where you are at any given moment? — Paul Caponigro

I've got to get the ultimate in composition today. or I've got to get the ultimate in light, I'll stay here until it appears. I was not making any demands. I went purely to see what would come, what might be there. I didn't have to be archaeologist or historian or tourist, I just needed to be available. — Paul Caponigro

I don't trust any camera you can't make out of wood. — Paul Caponigro

We don't have enough words for photography. Can you imagine writers having only one word for writing? — John Paul Caponigro

It's one thing to make a picture of what a person looks like, it's another thing to make a portrait of who they are. — Paul Caponigro

I'd say seeking is one of the fundamental artistic impulses. Art is about discovery. The medium is not the message. — John Paul Caponigro

The effort, diligence, and care required in practicing must be quickly suspended when pressure coming from anxiety or a desire for fast results causes them to degenerate. — Paul Caponigro

It's one thing to make a beautiful thing; it's another thing to make a living thing. — John Paul Caponigro

With the arrival of the new comes the need to overcome fascination with novelty in order to approach substance and sophistication - a sophistication born of subtlety and depth of perception, not complexity and perceived virtuosity. — John Paul Caponigro

Photographs are never records of the way things are; they're records of the way things were. — John Paul Caponigro

Keep alive the fact that a mystery has come into existence and that a physical being serves as a house for this mystery. — Paul Caponigro

Less information often leads to more interpretation. — John Paul Caponigro

We're responsible for everything that's included in the frame. We're also responsible for what's not included in the frame. We're responsible for the way we frame the world. — John Paul Caponigro

If you are engaging rationality, you are already engaging a place that makes you unavailable. Only when I recognize that inspiration has announced itself to my availability will I then say I need to use my mind to calculate exposure, my emotions to position myself and arrange a configuration of shapes that need to come into being, my body to put it all in place because we have been given a message and it has come through inspiration through being available.' — Paul Caponigro

Many oriental cultures make a distinction between two ways of looking - 'hard eyes' and 'soft eyes'. When we look with hard eyes, we see specific details with sharp focus, but we don't see the relationships between different details as well. When we look with soft eyes we see the relationships between everything in our field of vision, but with this softer focus, we don't see all the details as clearly. It's possible to look in two ways at once. — John Paul Caponigro

Images are altered in many ways, to many degrees, and for many reasons, so it's important for viewers to be informed of both. — John Paul Caponigro

Color is a powerful physical, biological, and psychological force. — John Paul Caponigro

The most important question is, 'Am I asking the most important question?' The second most important question is, 'Am I asking the most important question in the most important way?' — John Paul Caponigro

Surprisingly, Gestalt psychologists have found that when subjected to Ganz fields for long periods of time, we hallucinate. Can empty fields serve as mirrors, not for our exteriors, but for our interiors? — John Paul Caponigro

Photography is a medium, a language, through which I might come to experience directly, live more closely with, the interaction between myself and nature. — Paul Caponigro

Listen carefully. The way(s) we speak about things is revealing. — John Paul Caponigro

I use my music to tune myself. — Paul Caponigro

While many conclusions are drawn ... the process of asking questions is more important than the answers ... an ongoing process of discovery. — John Paul Caponigro

All photographs are about light. The great majority of photographs record light as a way of describing objects in space. A few photographs are less about objects and more about the space that contains them. Still fewer photographs are about light itself. — John Paul Caponigro