Edward Weston Quotes

45 Sourced Quotes

I was extravagant in the matter of cameras - anything photographic - I had to have the best. But that was to further my work. In most things I have gone along with the plainest - or without.

Edward Weston
There is nothing like a Bach fugue to remove me from a discordant moment... only Bach hold up fresh and strong after repeated playing. I can always return to Bach when the other records weary me.

Edward Weston
Anything that excites me for any reason, I will photograph; not searching for unusual subject matter, but making the commonplace unusual.

Edward Weston
Photography to the amateur is recreation, to the professional it is work, and hard work too, no matter how pleasurable it my be.

Edward Weston
Photography suits the temper of this age—of active bodies and minds. It is a perfect medium for one whose mind is teeming with ideas, imagery, for a prolific worker who would be slowed down by painting or sculpting, for one who sees quickly and acts decisively, accurately.

Edward Weston
My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, or the camera's eye may entirely change my idea.

Edward Weston
Modern Art is being used to index me. Surely it was a source but photographers have influenced Modern Art quite as deeply as they have been influenced, maybe more. Anyway painters don't have a copyright on M. A. We were all born in the same upheaval.

Edward Weston
Art is based on order. The world is full of 'sloppy Bohemians' and their work betrays them.

Edward Weston
Results alone should be appraised; the way in which these are achieved is of importance only to the maker.

Edward Weston
The painters have no copyright on modern art!... I believe in, and make no apologies for, photography: it is the most important graphic medium of our day. It does not have to be, indeed cannot be - compared to painting - it has different means and aims.

Edward Weston
For the obvious reason that nature - unadulterated and unimproved by man - is simply chaos. In fact, the camera proves that nature is crude and lacking in arrangement...

Edward Weston
So called composition becomes a personal thing, to be developed along with technique, as a personal way of seeing.

Edward Weston
A photograph has no value unless it looks exactly like a photograph and nothing else.

Edward Weston
An excellent conception can be quite obscured by faulty technical execution or clarified by faultless technique.

Edward Weston
My work is never intellectual. I never make a negative unless emotionally moved by my subject.

Edward Weston
Dare to be irrational! - keep free from formulas, open to any fresh impulse, fluid.

Edward Weston
It seems so utterly naive that landscape - not that of the pictorial school - is not considered of "social significance" when it has a far more important bearing on the human race of a given locale than excrescences called cities.

Edward Weston
Is love like art - something always ahead, never quite attained.

Edward Weston
Through this photographic eye you will be able to look out on a new light-world, a world for the most part uncharted and unexplored, a world that lies waiting to be discovered and revealed.

Edward Weston
A lifetime can well be spent correcting and improving one's own faults without bothering about others.

Edward Weston
I always work better when I do not reason, when no question of right or wrong enter in,-when my pulse quickens to the form before me without hesitation nor calculation.

Edward Weston
I am not limiting myself to theories, so I never question the rightness to my approach.

Edward Weston
For photography is a way to capture the moment - not just any moment, but the important one, this one moment out of all time when your subject is revealed to the fullest - that moment of perfection which comes once and is not repeated.

Edward Weston
When money enters in - then, for a price, I become a liar - and a good one I can be whether with pencil or subtle lighting or viewpoint. I hate it all, but so do I support not only my family, but my own work.

Edward Weston
The great scientist dares to differ from accepted 'facts' - think irrationally - let the artist do likewise.

Edward Weston
If I am interested, amazed, stimulated to work, that is sufficient reason to thank the gods, and go ahead!

Edward Weston
I want the stark beauty that a lens can so exactly render presented without interference of artistic effect.

Edward Weston
When subject matter is forced to fit into preconceived patterns, there can be no freshness of vision. Following rules of composition can only lead to a tedious repetition of pictorial cliches.

Edward Weston
Clouds, torsos, shells, peppers, trees, rocks, smoke stacks, are but interdependent, interrelated parts of a whole, which is life.

Edward Weston
The fact is that relatively few photographers ever master their medium. Instead they allow the medium to master them and go on an endless squirrel cage chase from new lens to new paper to new developer to new gadget, never staying with one piece of equipment long enough to learn its full capacities, becoming lost in a maze of technical information that is of little or no use since they don't know what to do with it.

Edward Weston