Bruce Barnbaum famous quotes

I'd really rather leave it to others to say what they see in it and to see if I've put something into my photographs beyond a mere recording. Yes, I've chosen the camera position, how I'm going to print the negative, the angel of the lens, what I'm going to include and exclude in the composition, so on and so forth. But, I'm still photographing a work of art, and I would rather leave it to others to comment on my work, as I just left it to you.
-- Bruce Barnbaum

#Photography #Art #Angel

...I always feel it's necessary to look at my images from two distances. Here is my criterion: If I can look at it from a distance and then come up close but find nothing more to see, it's printed too large. It's not giving me any new information when I come up to it.
-- Bruce Barnbaum

#Photography #Distance #Two

I think that's necessary in photography. We try to simplify the chaos that's out there - and that's true of the natural world as well as the mad-made world. Clearly, it's easier in the mad-made world because it has already been structured.
-- Bruce Barnbaum

#Photography #Thinking #Mad

There's a rapport that any photographer is going to have with his subject matter. And if you don't have a rapport, you're going to find the task of photographing it difficult.
-- Bruce Barnbaum

#Photography #Tasks #Matter

Why is the 'average man' so far below average?
-- Bruce Barnbaum

#Men #Average

I believe that creativity is a product of intelligence. I don't believe that creative work can be produced by fools, dullards, or mediocre people, except in the rarest of accidents. Creativity is a product of desire, thought, experience, experimentation and inner conviction. Taken together, these five qualities imply intelligence and commitment.
-- Bruce Barnbaum

#Believe #Taken #Creativity

Rules are foolish, arbitrary, mindless things that raise you quickly to a level of acceptable mediocrity, then prevent you from progressing further.
-- Bruce Barnbaum

#Progress #Arbitrary #Mediocrity

I guess it's not the plan that counts, but the words in which the plan is wrapped. Semantics count for everything, and it's obvious that the resolute Republicans are better at semantics than the weak, flip-flopping Democrats.
-- Bruce Barnbaum

#Flip #Republican #Weak

We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there. We have been conditioned to expect... but, as photographers, we must learn to relax our beliefs.

In any art, you don't know in advance what you want to say - it's revealed to you as you say it. That's the difference between art and illustration.

Producing a photographic document involves preparation in excess. There is first the examination of the idea of the project. Then the visits to the scene, the casual conversations, and more formal interviews - talking, and listening, and looking, looking. ... And finally, the pictures themselves, each one planned, talked, taken and examined in terms of the whole.

Teaching is an instinctual art, mindful of potential, craving of realizations, a pausing, seamless process.

Where humanity sowed faith, hope, and unity, joy’s garden blossomed.

That's the funny thing about America--the blessed thing. As many people as there are to hold you back, there are angels whose humanity makes up for all the others. I've had my share of angels.

But this Christ or Redeemer took not upon him the nature of angels, but the seed of Abraham, that is, human nature, that in the nature which sinned he might make the expiation required.

Hell was created for the devil and his angels. If you go, you are an intruder.

I do not want to be the angel of any home: I want for myself what I want for other women, absolute equality. After that is secured, then men and women can take turns being angels.

She was my sacred angel that I could never violate. Reira was my sanctuary. I needed something solid like that in this dirty, disappointing world.