Edward Weston Quotes

The camera sees more than the eye, so why not make use of it?

The photographer's most important and likewise most difficult task is not learning to manage his camera, or to develop, or to print. It is learning to see photographically — that is, learning to see his subject matter in terms of the capacities of his tools and processes, so that he can instantaneously translate the elements and values in a scene before him into the photograph he wants to make.

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

The prejudice many photographers have against colour photography comes from not thinking of colour as form. You can say things with colour that can't be said in black and white... Those who say that colour will eventually replace black and white are talking nonsense. The two do not compete with each other. They are different means to different ends.

I see my finished platinum print (in the viewfinder) in all its desired qualities, before my exposure.

Why limit yourself to what your eyes see when you have an opportunity to extend your vision?

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.

Since the recording process is instantaneous, and the nature of the image such that it cannot survive corrective handwork, it is obvious that the finished print must be created in full before the film is exposed.

...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.

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.

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

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

"Only with effort can the camera be forced to lie: basically it is an honest medium: so the photographer is much more likely to approach nature in a spirit of inquiry, of communion, instead of with the saucy swagger of self-dubbed "artists"."

The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer's understanding of his subject and mastery of his process.

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

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

In common with other artists the photographer wants his finished print to convey to others his own response to his subject. In the fulfillment of this aim, his greatest asset is the directness of the process he employs. But this advantage can only be retained if he simplifies his equipment and technic to the minimum necessary, and keeps his approach from from all formula, art-dogma, rules and taboos. Only then can he be free to put his photographic sight to use in discovering and revealing the nature of the world he lives in.

Anything more than 500 yards from the car just isn't photogenic.

If I have any 'message' worth giving to a beginner it is that there are no short cuts in photography.

Now one does not think during creative work: any more than one thinks when driving a car. One has a background of years — learning — unlearning— success — failure — dreaming — thinking — experience — back it goes — farther back than one's ancestors: all this, — then the moment of creation, the focussing of all into the moment. So I can make — "without thought" — fifteen carefully-considered negatives one every fifteen minutes, — given material with as many possibilities.

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

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

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.

No photographer is better than the simplest of cameras

It's hard not to tell the truth with a camera. Artists are particularly good at that.

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.

The camera should be used for a recording of life, for rendering the very substance and quintessence of the thing itself, whether it be polished steel or palpitating flesh.

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

When a photographer masters the tools and processes of the art, then the quality of the work is only limited by his creative vision.

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

Good composition is merely the strongest way of seeing.

To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible.

People who wouldn't think of taking a sieve to the well to draw water fail to see the folly in taking a camera to make a painting.

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.

......so called “composition” becomes a personal thing, to be developed along with technique, as a personal way of seeing.

The creative force in man recognizes and records these rhythms with the medium most suitable to him, the object, or the moment, feeling the cause, the life within the outer form. Recording unfelt facts, acquired by rule, results in sterile inventory. To see the Thing Itself is essential: the quintessence revealed direct without the fog of impressionism - the casual noting of the superficial phase, a transitory mood.

This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock.

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.

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.

Ultimately success or failure in photographing people depends on the photographer's ability to understand his fellow man.

I see no reason for recording the obvious.

I don't care if you make a print on a bath mat, just as long as it is a good print.

To see the Thing itself is essential: the quintessence revealed direct without the fog of impressionism... This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock. Significant presentation - not interpretation.

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

Arguments against photography ever being considered a fine art are: the element of chance which enters in, — finding things ready-made for a machine to record, and of course the mechanics of the medium. I say that chance enters into all branches of art.

...the pepper is beginning to show signs of strain, and tonight should grace a salad. It has been suggested that I am a cannibal to eat my models.

I would say to any artist: Don't be repressed in your work, dare to experiment, consider any urge, if in a new direction all the better.

Now, to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravity before going for a walk.