Edward Steichen
[Photographer and curator, b. 1879, Luxembourg, Germany, d. 1973, West Redding, Connecticut.]
It is an error common to many artists, [who] strive merely to avoid
mistakes, when all our efforts should be to create positive and important
work. Better positive and important with mistakes and failures than perfect
mediocrity.
Every other artist begins [with] a blank canvas, a piece of paper... the photographer begins with the finished product.
Once you really commence to see things, then you really commence to feel things.
No photographer is as good as the simplest camera.
Every photograph is a fake from start to finish.
Long before the birth of a word language the caveman communicated by visual images. The invention of photography gave visual communication its most simple, direct, universal language.
(1960)
A photograph is worth a thousand words, provided it is accompanied by only ten words.
I don’t care about making photography an art. I want to make good photographs. I’d like to know who first got it into his head that dreaminess and mist is an art. Take things as they are; take good photographs and the art will take care of itself.
(1923)
