Ben Shahn
Ben Shahn
Ben Shahnwas a Lithuanian-born American artist. He is best known for his works of social realism, his left-wing political views, and his series of lectures published as The Shape of Content...
NationalityLithuanian
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth12 September 1898
CountryLithuania
Ben Shahn quotes about
angle helpful pictures quality
So, most of my pictures don't have any posed quality and this was a very helpful thing in the whole quality of my work, this angle finder.
abandon cameras gadgets people simpler sure
Now again, there are so many gadgets on cameras now that people abandon these simpler instruments for the more sure instruments.
beyond brought flatter measure roosevelt thinking
I could flatter myself in thinking our photographs brought Roosevelt in in '36 overwhelmingly. But beyond that you can't measure it.
amateur enable himself outside supports whose works
An amateur is someone who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint. A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint.
efforts felt social strongly trying
I felt very strongly the whole social impact of that depression, you know, and I felt very strongly about the efforts that this Resettlement Administration was trying to accomplish; resettling people, helping them, and so on.
hard written
It's pretty hard to measure influence of written or visual material.
asked deal great impossible work
I've been asked a great deal about the influence I've had with my work and it's impossible to say, you know.
felt outfit time
I did take my camera along, as I felt there wouldn't be enough time to draw the things I wanted to do. I did some drawing and did a lot of photography but I was not part of Stryker's outfit at all.
arranged art exhibition impressed involved picked work
I was so impressed with the work we were doing and I was very involved ideologically in photography - that I arranged an exhibition at the College Art Association. The first exhibition I picked the photographs and so on and we had an exhibition in New York.
cover half harvest job payroll salary time
In '38, this time I did a job for Mr. Stryker. I went on his payroll at about half the salary I was getting before, to cover what he called Harvest in Ohio.
country job offered suggested worked
So, I was offered this job to come down there but first it was suggested that I take a trip around the country in the areas in which we worked to see what it's all about, and I tell you that was a revelation to me.
asia began interested monuments time took
Some time ago, we went to Asia and took a camera along, and I began to do what I'd done even years ago doing people. I couldn't get interested in it. And I did hundreds of photographs of details of the monuments as sculpture.
angle avoid field genuinely horrible man returned
When a man returned from the field and we'd look at the work, we'd criticize each other very genuinely and never offensively. And we would avoid all tricks, angle shots were just horrible to us.
mine south wherever
In the South or in the mine country, wherever you point the camera there is a picture.