Berenice Abbott

The camera is no more an instrument of preservation; the image is...

The camera is no more an instrument of preservation; the image is...

Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be read more

Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself.

Let us first say what photography is not. A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. read more

Let us first say what photography is not. A photograph is not a painting, a poem, a symphony, a dance. It is not just a pretty picture, not an exercise in contortionist techniques and sheer print quality. It is or should be a significant document, a penetrating statement, which can be described in a very simple term - selectivity.

What I mean by objectivity is not the objectivity of a machine, but of a sensible human being with the read more

What I mean by objectivity is not the objectivity of a machine, but of a sensible human being with the mystery of personal selection at the heart of it. The second challenge has been to impose order onto the things seen and to supply the visual context and the intellectual framework - that to me is the art of photography.

Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to read more

Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.