Famous Quotes & Sayings

Chuck Close

I think I was driven to paint portraits to commit images of friends and family to memory. I have face blindness, and once a face is flattened out, I can remember it better.

Chuck Close

From my point of view, photography never got any better than it was in 1840.

Chuck Close

In my art, I deconstruct and then I reconstruct, so visual perception is one of my primary interests.

Chuck Close

Part of the joy of looking at art is getting in sync in some ways with the decision-making process that the artist used and the record that's embedded in the work.

Chuck Close

Painting is the most magical of mediums. The transcendence is truly amazing to me every time I go to a museum and I see how somebody figured another way to rub colored dirt on a flat surface and make space where there is no space or make you think of a life experience.

Chuck Close

It doesn't upset artists to find out that artists used lenses or mirrors or other aids, but it certainly does upset the art historians.

Chuck Close

It always amazes me that just when I think there's nothing left to do in photography and that all permutations and possibilities have been exhausted, someone comes along and puts the medium to new use, and makes it his or her own, yanks it out of this kind of amateur status, and makes it as profound and as moving and as formally interesting as any other medium.

Chuck Close

I don't work with inspiration. Inspiration is for amateurs. I just get to work.

Chuck Close

The thing that interests me about photography, and why it's different from all other media, is that it's the only medium in which there is even the possibility of an accidental masterpiece.

Chuck Close

Inspiration is highly overrated. If you sit around and wait for the clouds to part, it's not liable to ever happen. More often than not, work is salvation.

Chuck Close

I always thought that one of the reasons why a painter likes especially to have other painters look at his or her work is the shared experience of having pushed paint around.

Chuck Close

Ease is the enemy of the artist. When things get too easy, you're in trouble.

Chuck Close

You know, the way art history is taught, often there's nothing that tells you why the painting is great. The description of a lousy painting and the description of a great painting will very much sound the same.

Chuck Close

While photography is the easiest medium in which to be competent, it is the hardest in which to develop an idiosyncratic personal vision.

Chuck Close

A face is a road map of someone's life. Without any need to amplify that or draw attention to it, there's a great deal that's communicated about who this person is and what their life experiences have been.

Ansel Adams

A great photograph is a full expression of what one feels.

Ansel Adams

In a strict sense photography can never be abstract, for the camera is incapable of synthetic integration.

Ansel Adams

I knew my destiny when I first experienced Yosemite.

Ansel Adams

It is just as important to bring people the evidence of the beauty of the world of nature and of man as it is to give them a document of ugliness, squalor, and despair.

Ansel Adams

I believe photography is a tool to express our positive assessment of the world. A tool to acquire ultimate happiness and belief.

Ansel Adams

The technique of 35mm photography appears simple. One is beguiled by the quick viewing and operation, and by the very questionable inclination to make many pictures with the hope that some will be good.

Ansel Adams

To the vast majority of people a photograph is an image of something within their direct experience: a more-or-less factual reality. It is difficult for them to realize that the photograph can be the source of experience, as well as the reflection of spiritual awareness of the world and of self.

Ansel Adams

Bad weather makes for good photography.

Ansel Adams

A photograph is not an accident - is a concept. It exists at, or before, the moment of exposure of the negative.

Ansel Adams

We make images to "honor what is greater and more interesting than we are."

Ansel Adams

I am probably afraid that some spectator will not understand my photography - therefore I proceed to make it really less understandable by writing defensibly about it.

Ansel Adams

All art is a vision penetrating the illusions of reality, and photography is one form of this vision and revelation.

Ansel Adams

It is the photographer, not the camera, that is the instrument.

Ansel Adams

I am always surprised when I see several cameras, a gaggle on lenses, filters, meters, et cetera, rattling around in a soft bag with a complement of refuse and dust. Sometimes the professional is the worst offender!

Ansel Adams

When I'm ready to make a photograph, I think I quite obviously see in my minds eye something that is not literally there in the true meaning of the word. I'm interested in something which is built up from within, rather than just extracted from without.

Ansel Adams

...one sees differently with color photography than black-and-white... in short, visualization must be modified by the specific nature of the equipment and materials being used.

Ansel Adams

The dismal half-baked images of the average "reportage" and "documentary" photography are self dammning... the slick manner, the slightly obscure significance, the esoteric fear of simple beauty for its own sake - I am deeply concerned with these manifestations of decay. Gene Smith's work validates my most vigorous convictions that if the documentary photographs is to be truly effective it must contain elements of art, intensity, fine craft and spirituality. All these his work contains and we may turn to his work with gratitude, appreciation and great respect.

Ansel Adams

The negative is the score, and the print the performance.