Jeffrey Smart on Keeping with It:
It is no use waiting about for inspiration. An artist has to work, work when he does not wish to work, and sometimes pursue and flog a dead painting, all the time knowing, it will be discarded. But he knows that by the act of painting, even in despair, he is placing himself in a position where something may turn up. It is the agony of creation. It takes some sort of mad persistence to go on being a painter.via Jeffrey Smart (by Barry Pearce) by Jeffrey Smart.
You can’t control anything and once you accept that and stop trying to get control, then you actually get some controlvia Streets of Philadelphia … A Visual Diary … Page 15 … The Jeff Story Continues by Street Shooter.
Andre D. Wagner on Photography and Life:
Photography has definitely saved me. Because of it, I enjoy life, so I don’t spend time thinking about the suffering of life.via Andre D. Wagner Interview: New York Portraits That Give Face to Connection by Freddy Martinez.
So when I am shooting spontaneously on the streets, I think it is random events that hit my eye. I might see something interesting and respond to it. Sometimes I know what I got, sometimes I think I got something good, but don’t. Sometimes it is a total surprise. I might take a photo of something very quickly, without being quite sure of everything going on. And in the editing process I can discover interesting things.via Making a Fiction in the Mind of the Viewer: Interview with Jack Simon (*) by Eric Kim (*).
when people gather on the corner, you never know if something is going to happen.via Joel Meyerowitz - Street Photography (YouTube) (*) by Joel Meyerowitz (*).
Learn to listen to your photographs. They are often wiser than you are.While Alex Webb (*) advises:
Follow your passion (*). You should pursue photography (*) because it is something you love - that you absolutely need to do. The rewards from photography - recognition, occasional remuneration - are so fleeting that it makes no sense to pursue photography (*) except as a labor of love.5 frågor till: Alex Webb & Rebecca Norris Webb (*) by fotografiska (*).
I feel that on some level I photograph to understand (*) what it is and why it is I'm photographing. It's a process of understanding (*).via Books of the Year: Alex Webb's "The Suffering of Light" (*) by Stan Horaczek (*).
I'm wondering if even street photography (*) can be trusted to tell us anything beyond what is in the photographer's own heart at the moment--via 'We Have Not Loved Life': Garry Winogrand at SFMOMA (*) by Larrisa Archer (*).
I wonder if it is in fact the most deceptive of all genres, for the very reason that it posits a certain objectivity, not rehearsed and posed but candid and full of accidents, an imprint of a reality that is out there for anyone and everyone to witness together.
I wonder if, regardless of the literal elements of the scene, the tone an image takes on and expresses is due to the photographer's own moods, his own prejudices, enthusiasms, "abortive sorrows and short-winded elations."
And then I wonder if this is in fact any less reliable than the notion that the images can say something objectively true about their over-arching subject (for instance, America) when that subject is itself so complex, many-sided, and open to a seemingly endless range of interpretations.
