Siskind Quotes & Sayings

As photographers, we must learn to relax our beliefs. Move on objects with your eye straight on, to the left, around on the right. Watch them grow large as they approach, group and regroup as you shift your position. Relationships gradually emerge and sometimes assert themselves with finality. And that's your picture. — Aaron Siskind

However, I must stress that my own interest is immediate and in the picture. What I am conscious of and what I feel is the picture I am making, the relation of that picture to others I have made and, more generally, its relation to others I have experienced. — Aaron Siskind

As the language or vocabulary of photography has been extended, the emphasis of meaning has shifted, shifted from what the world looks like to what we feel about the world and what we want the world to mean. — Aaron Siskind

Occasionally, human beings are briefly de-animated, and the stories of people who are briefly de-animated that interest me the most are those having to do with the cold. — Mark Roth

The business of making a photograph may be said in simple terms to consist of three elements: the objective world (whose permanent condition is change and disorder), the sheet of paper on which the picture will be realized, and the experience which brings them together. — Aaron Siskind

A concern with parenting ... must direct attention beyond behavior. This is because parenting is not simply a set of behaviors, but participation in an interpersonal, diffuse, affective relationship. Parenting is an eminently psychological role in a way that many other roles and activities are not. — Nancy Chodorow

We should be so joyful from God's grace that others would respond by saying, 'I wish I had your God. — Francis Chan

In any art, you don't know in advance what you want to say - it's revealed to you as you say it. That's the difference between art and illustration. — Aaron Siskind

What is the subject matter of this apparently very personal world? It has been suggested that these shapes and images are underworld characters, the inhabitants of the vast common realm of memories that have gone down below the level of conscious control. It may be they are. The degree of emotional involvement and the amount of free association with the material being photographed would point in that direction. — Aaron Siskind

It is no longer a matter of expressing reality, but of expressing what one feels about reality. — Aaron Siskind

Let us be poised, wise and our own today. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The idea of Juilliard was that it would give you this toolbox full of skills that you could take with you and apply to anything. — Robin Williams

The inner drama is the meaning of the exterior event. — Aaron Siskind

The only other things I got from the abstract expressionists is the absolute belief that this canvas is the complete total area of struggle, this is the arena, this is where the fight is taking place, the battle. Everybody believes that, but you have to really believe that and work that way. — Aaron Siskind

Perhaps you would be so kind as to tell these details to the driver. As I believe I told you before, I am a busy man."
"I'd like to keep communications to one channel. It makes it clear where the responsibility lies."
"Responsibility?"
"In other words, say the cat dies while I'm gone, you'd get nothing out of me, even if I did find the sheep."
"Hmm," said the man. "Fair enough. You are somewhat off base, but you do quite well for an amateur. I shall write this down, so please speak slowly. — Haruki Murakami

Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever ... it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything. — Aaron Siskind

Happiness is to take up the struggle in the midst of the raging storm and not to pluck the lute in the moonlight or recite poetry among the blossoms. — Ding Ling

I may be wrong, but the essential illustrative nature of most documentary photography, and the worship of the object per se, in our best nature photography, is not enough to satisfy the man of today, compounded as he is of Christ, Freud, and Marx. — Aaron Siskind

If I didn't think, I'd be much happier. — Sylvia Plath

Do you know how many nights I've spent twisting your English off my tongue? I do not take pride in your English. I want to stumble on my words. I want to speak with an accent so thick that it requires silence. I want you to struggle to understand me. Realize your English is not superior. Your English does not equate intelligence. Do not compliment me on how well I have accepted colonization. I do not want your pat on the back. I was forced to learn this language. I didn't choose to. Your English disconnects me from my people. I am deaf to my own sacred language because of your English.
Your English has done nothing for me. — Bilphena Yahwon

For some reason or other there was in me the desire to see the world clean and fresh and alive, as primitive things are clean and fresh and alive. The so-called documentary picture left me wanting something. — Aaron Siskind

To me documentary photography means making a picture so that the viewer doesn't think about the man who made the picture. At its esthetic core is very old tradition in art: naturalism. And its purpose is to document all facets of social relationships. — Aaron Siskind

Almost inevitably there are tensions in the picture, tensions between the outside world and the inside world. For me, a successful picture resolves these tensions without eliminating them. — Aaron Siskind

When I make a photograph I want it to be an altogether new object, complete and self-contained, whose basic condition is order (unlike the world of events and actions whose permanent condition is change and disorder). — Aaron Siskind

I believe that any form of art is a species of exploration and transgression ... Art by its nature is a transgressive act, and artists must accept being punished for it. The more original and unsettling their art, the more devastating the punishment. — Joyce Carol Oates

When my heart bleeds, it needs no stab with the dagger. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there. We have been conditioned to expect ... but, as photographers, we must learn to relax our beliefs ... if you look very intensely and slowly, things will happen that you never dreamed of before. — Aaron Siskind

I was given a small camera as a wedding gift from a very dear friend. My first pictures were taken on my honeymoon. As soon as I became familiar with the camera, I was intrigued with the possibilities of expression it offered. It was like a discovery for me. — Aaron Siskind

Surely, cousin, you cannot mean to *jilt* her?' said Anthea, in accents of reprobation.
'Nay, it wouldn't be seemly,' he agreed. 'I'll just have to dispose of her, as you might say.'
'Good God! *Murder* her?'
'There's no need to be in a quake,' he said reassuringly. 'No one will ever know!'
'If only - oh, if only I could do to you what I *long* to do!' exclaimed Anthea. 'If you were but a *few* inches shorter
!'
He said hopefully: 'Nay, don't let that fatch you, love! It'll be no trouble at all to lift you up: in fact, there's nothing I'd like better!'
Furiously blushing, she retorted: 'I didn't mean that I wished to *kiss* you! — Georgette Heyer

I have a thorough understanding of nutrition, and I feed my body only foods that support health. — Louise Hay

You are not punished for your sins and suffer later in some kind of torture chamber; you are punished BY your sins and suffer consequences NOW. Just like your court systems. You do a crime now you get punished now — Gregory Willis

The only nature I'm interested in is my own nature. — Aaron Siskind

Tomorrow, Canada, we chase the crazy. — Kelly Siskind

Producing a photographic document involves preparation in excess. There is first the examination of the idea of the project. Then the visits to the scene, the casual conversations, and more formal interviews - talking, and listening, and looking, looking ... And finally, the pictures themselves, each one planned, talked, taken and examined in terms of the whole. — Aaron Siskind