Ben Shahn
[Photographer and artist, b. 1898, Kovno, Russia (now Kaunas, Lithuania), d. 1969, New York.]
I said, “Walker [Evans], remember your promise to show me how to photograph?” He says, “Well, it’s very easy, Ben. F9 on the sunny side of the street, F4.5 on the shady side of the street. For a twentieth of a second hold your camera steady,” and that was all. This was the only lesson I ever had.
Douglas McCulloh
[Photographer, b. 1959, Los Angeles, lives in Los Angeles.]
To teach consequential photography, don’t bother with Photoshop or f-stops. Create a craving for images.
Eudora Welty
[Writer, b. 1909, Jackson, Mississippi, d. 2001, Jackson.]
They taught me. The subjects taught me, and my response is what I photographed.
Robert Adams
[Photographer and writer, b. 1937, Orange, New Jersey, lives in Astoria, Oregon.]
…talking about pictures as though you could tell anybody how to take good ones is nuts. Pictures are given, not taken.
Brian Duffy
[Photographer, b. 1933, London, d. 2010, London.]
One of the great problems with photography is that any twat you give a camera to can take a photograph. What that does to the photographer is immediately create an inferiority complex within him because anyone can do it, which of course they can.
Berenice Abbott
[Photographer, writer, teacher, b. 1898, Springfield, Ohio, d. 1991, Monson, Maine.]
There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.
Edmund Hillary
[Mountaineer, b. 1919, Tuakau, New Zealand, d. 2008, Auckland, New Zealand.]
As far as I knew, he [Tenzing Norgay] had never taken a photograph before—and the summit of Everest was hardly the place to show him how.
(On why there is a photo of Tenzing Norgay on the summit of Mount Everest during the first successful climb, but not one of Hillary.)
Paul Strand
[Photographer, b. 1890, New York, d. 1976, Oregeval, France.]
I read the other day that Minor White said it takes twenty years to become a photographer. I think that is a bit of an exaggeration. I would say, judging from myself, that it takes at least eight or nine years. But it does not take any longer than it takes to learn to play the piano or the violin. If it takes twenty years, you might as well forget about it!
