Author’s Note:
Listed below are some of the words that have inspired me to grow as both a thinker and a photographer. I believe that much of photography is seeing the world with a curious and patient eye. Much of what I have learned through my photographic endeavors have taught me to communicate with more respect, poise, and interest in my world. I believe photography is a means by which truth comes out, by which love comes out, and by which hope, beauty, and individuality are found.
“To take a photograph is to align the head, the eye and the heart. It’s a way of life” – Henri Cartier-Bresson
“For me, the camera is a sketchbook, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which, in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously.” -Henri Cartier-Bresson
“In order to “give a meaning” to the world, one has to feel oneself involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, a discipline of mind, sensitivity, and a sense of geometry– it is by great economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression. One must always take photographs with the greatest respect for the subject and for oneself.” The Photographer discovered that the gestures of a hand were infinitely various and that the wall of a building in the sun was never twice the same…” – Henri Cartier-Bresson
“The Photographer discovered that the gestures of a hand were infinitely various and that the wall of a building in the sun was never twice the same…The first thing the photographer learned was that photography dealt with the actual; he had not only to accept this fact but to treasure it; unless he did, photography would defeat him…” -John Szarkowski
“…photography, and our understanding of it, has spread from a center; it has, by infusion, penetrated our consciousness. Like an organism, photography was born whole. It is in our progressive discovery of it that its history lies…”-John Szarkowski
“…he could only record it as he found it, and it was found in nature in a fragmented and unexplained form—not as a story, but as scattered and suggestive clues. The photographer could not assemble these clues into a coherent narrative, he could only isolate the fragment, document it, and by so doing claim for it some special significance, a meaning which went beyond simple description. The compelling clarity with which a photograph recorded the trivial suggested that the subject had never before been properly seen, that it was in fact perhaps not trivial, but filled with undiscovered meaning. If photographs could not be read as stories, they could be read as symbols” – John Szarkowski