Elizabeth McCausland
[Writer and critic, b. 1899, Wichita, Kansas, d. 1965, New York.]
The fact is a thousand times more important than the photographer...
We have all had a surfeit of “pretty” pictures, of romantic views of hilltop, seaside, rolling fields, skyscrapers seen askew, picturesque bits of life torn out of their sordid context. It is life that is exciting and important, and life whole and
unretouched. (1939)
‘The camera eye cannot lie’ is lightly said. On the contrary, the camera eye usually does nothing but lie, rationalizing the wrinkles of an aging face, obligingly overlooking peeling paint and rotting wood. But the external world is those facts of decay and change, of social retrogression and injustice...
Today progressive photographers are not especially interested in the point [Is photography Art?]; it seems an empty issue. There is the whole wide world before the lens, and reality waiting to be set down imperishably.
(1939)
