{"id":15273,"date":"2015-06-03T11:55:08","date_gmt":"2015-06-03T15:55:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johnpaulcaponigro.com\/blog\/?p=15273"},"modified":"2015-06-03T11:55:08","modified_gmt":"2015-06-03T15:55:08","slug":"32-quotes-by-photographer-walker-evans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johnpaulcaponigro.com\/blog\/15273\/32-quotes-by-photographer-walker-evans\/","title":{"rendered":"32 Quotes By Photographer Walker Evans"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nEnjoy this collection of quotes by photographer Walker Evans.
\n\u201cThe eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.\u201d \u2015 Walker Evans,
\n\u201cStare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cWhether he is an artist or not, the photographer is a joyous sensualist, for the simple reason that the eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cI think there is a period of esthetic discovery that happens to a man and he can do all sorts of things at white heat.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cWith the camera, it’s all or nothing. You either get what you’re after at once, or what you do has to be worthless. I don’t think the essence of photography has the hand in it so much. The essence is done very quietly with a flash of the mind, and with a machine. I think too that photography is editing, editing after the taking. After knowing what to take, you have to do the editing.\u201d – Walker Evans
\nInterviewer: “Do you think it’s possible for the camera to lie?”
\nWalker Evans: “It certainly is. It almost always does.” – Walker Evans
\n\u201cI\u2019m sometimes called a ‘documentary photographer’ but… a man operating under that definition could take a sly pleasure in the disguise. Very often I’m doing one thing when I’m thought to be doing another.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cDocumentary: That\u2019s a sophisticated and misleading word. And not really clear\u2026 The term should be documentary style\u2026 You see, a document has use, whereas art is really useless.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cI used to try to figure out precisely what I was seeing all the time, until I discovered I didn’t need to. If the thing is there, why, there it is.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cDetachment, lack of sentimentality, originality, a lot of things that sound rather empty. I know what they mean. Let\u2019s say, “visual impact” may not mean much to anybody. I could point it out though. I mean it\u2019s a quality that something has or does not have. Coherence. Well, some things are weak, some things are strong\u2026\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cWhat I believe is really good in the so-called documentary approach to photography is the addition of lyricism. This quality is usually produced unconsciously and even unintentionally and accidentally by the cameraman.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cThe secret of photography is, the camera takes on the character and personality of the handler.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cWhen I first made photographs, they were too plain to be considered art and I wasn’t considered an artist. I didn’t get any attention at all. The people who looked at my work thought, well, that’s just a snapshot of the backyard. Privately I knew otherwise and through stubbornness stayed with it\u2026\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cI began to wonder \u2013 I knew I was an artist or wanted to be one \u2013 but I was wondering whether I really was an artist. I was doing such ordinary things that I could feel the difference. Most people would look at those things and say, \u2018Well, that\u2019s nothing. What did you do that for? That\u2019s just a wreck of a car or a wreck of a man. That\u2019s nothing. That isn\u2019t art.\u2019 They don\u2019t say that anymore. – Walker Evans
\n\u201cLeaving aside the mysteries and the inequities of human talent, brains, taste, and reputations, the matter of art in photography may come down to this: it is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing; it is the defining of observation full and felt.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cThe meaning of quality in photography\u2019s best pictures lies written in the language of vision. That language is learned by chance, not system; …our overwhelming formal education deals in words, mathematical figures and methods of rational thought, not in images.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cThe photographs are not illustrative. They, and the text, are coequal, mutually independent, and fully collaborative. By their fewness, and by the importance of the reader\u2019s eye, this will be misunderstood by most of that minority which does not wholly ignore it. In the interests, however, of the history and future of photography, that risk seems irrelevant, and this flat statement necessary.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cSomewhere in our search for reality we have passed something by, something important that we no longer find amid the bits and pieces of disassembled matter-something vital that we cannot build out of these parts. There is surely something else, some piece of divinity in us, something that was before the elements, and that owes no homage to the sun.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cIt is easy to imagine fantasy as physical and myth as real. We do it almost every moment. We do this as we dream, as we think, and as we cope with the world about us. But these worlds of fantasy that we form into the solid things around us are the source of our discontent. They inspire our search to find ourselves.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cI work rather blindly. I have a theory that seems to work with me that some of the best things you ever do sort of come through you. You don\u2019t know where you get the impetus and response to what\u2019s before your eyes.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cI do note that photography, a despised medium to work in, is full of empty phonies and worthless commercial people. That presents quite a challenge to the man who can take delight in being in a very difficult, disdained medium.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cI say half jokingly that photography is the most difficult of the arts. It does require a certain arrogance to see and to choose. I feel myself walking on a tightrope instead of on the ground.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cGood photography is unpretentious.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cDo we know what we look like? Not really.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201c\u2026nature photographs downright bore me for some reason or other. I think: \u2018Oh, yes. Look at that sand dune. What of it?\u2019\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cPhotography is not cute cats, nor nudes, motherhood or arrangements of manufactured products. Under no circumstances it is anything ever anywhere near a beach.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cIncidentally, part of a photographer\u2019s gift should be with people. You can do some wonderful work if you know how to make people understand what you\u2019re doing and feel all right about it, and you can do terrible work if you put them on the defense, which they all are at the beginning. You\u2019ve got to take them off their defensive attitude and make them participate.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cIt’s easy to photograph light reflecting from a surface, the truly hard part is capturing the light in the air.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cPrivilege, if you’re very strict, is an immoral and unjust thing to have, but if you’ve got it you didn’t choose to get it and you might as well use it. You’re privileged to be at Yale, but you know you’re under an obligation to repay what’s been put into you.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cI never took it upon myself to change the world. And those contemporaries of mine who were going around falling for the idea that they were going to bring down the United States government and make a new world were just asses to me.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cIt\u2019s too presumptuous and na\u00efve to think you can change society by a photograph or anything else… I equate that with propaganda; I think that\u2019s a lower rank of purpose.\u201d – Walker Evans
\n\u201cDie knowing something. You’re not here long.\u201d \u2015 Walker Evans
\nSee more in 12 Great Photographs By\u00a0Great Photographers.<\/strong><\/span><\/a>
\nView more in The Essential Collection Of Documentaries On Photographers.<\/span><\/a><\/strong>
\nRead more in The Essential Collection Of Quotes By Photographers.<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Enjoy this collection of quotes by photographer Walker Evans. \u201cThe eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.\u201d \u2015 Walker Evans, \u201cStare. It is the way to educate your eye, and more. Stare, pry, listen, eavesdrop. Die knowing something. You are not here long.\u201d –…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spay_email":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true},"categories":[3202],"tags":[1249,56,80,91],"post_folder":[],"yoast_head":"\n32 Quotes By Photographer Walker Evans - John Paul Caponigro<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.johnpaulcaponigro.com\/blog\/15273\/32-quotes-by-photographer-walker-evans\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"32 Quotes By Photographer Walker Evans - John Paul Caponigro\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"  Enjoy this collection of quotes by photographer Walker Evans. \u201cThe eye traffics in feelings, not in thoughts.\u201d \u2015 Walker Evans, \u201cStare. 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