Photo Quotes ArchiveQuotes by Brooks Jensen (51 quotes)
"Thirty-five years ago I became interested in photography because of the magic I saw in images. I underestimated, however, the power of photography to connect me to people."
Source: LensWork Podcast LW0348, "What Makes A good Fine Art Photograph"
Photography > Photographer Quote #126
"Photograph and engage life as though it is very short. It is--as you will learn when you see how quickly the next ten years go by."
Source: LensWork Podcast LW0338, "Photography as a Personally Expressive Art"
Photography > General Quote #140
"Even the modest, completed project is better than the grandest good intention."
"A good fine art photograph is one that makes the viewer so aware of the emotional content that the viewer is unaware of the print."
"If photography is truly an art, then what it expresses is human emotion. Not what the world looks like. … It’s not about what's in front of you, it's about what's inside of you. ... Expression, that's what its all about. Artistic expression, not objective duplication. "
"I learned that the most meaningful work is found in those projects that are produced purposefully, in order to complete a specific artistic vision or statement."
"Never forget that all the great photographs in history were made with more primitive camera equipment than you currently own."
Source: LensWork, "Twenty-one Ways to Improve Your Artwork". Issue 58, Page 9
Photography > Equipment Quote #256
"Realize that creativity does not work on a clock. ...Do photography (or at least think photography) every day."
Source: LensWork, "Twenty-one Ways to Improve Your Artwork". Issue 58, Page 11
Photography > Technique Quote #257
"Art without thought is incomplete. Art with thought is incomplete. Art making requires both thinking and non-thinking in order to become more than mere pretty pictures."
Source: LensWork, "Twenty-one Ways to Improve Your Artwork". Issue 58, Page 13
Art > Creating Quote #258
"...art making is a process, and lessons wait in every moment to be discovered. I'm still making art and still learning every day. And I have faith that that the most important lessons--as well as my most important works of art--are yet to be discovered."
Source: LensWork, "Twenty-one Ways to Improve Your Artwork". Issue 58, Page 13
Art > Creating Quote #259
" …the practical pragmatics of being an art maker is that you also have to be engaged in society, in life, and in the day to day to day affairs that all the non-art makers of society are engaged in. The challenge of being an art maker is not the challenge of configuring your life for escape. The challenge is configuring your life so that it can include the everyday affairs of everyday life and the time, the discipline, and the necessities of being an artist."
Source: LensWork Podcast LW0307, “The Universal Itinerate Photographer Fantasy”.
Creativity > General Quote #263
"Photography is this incredible niche thing. You are either sort of into photography or you’re not."
Source: LensWork Podcast LW0309, "The Niche That Is Photography”.
Photography > General Quote #264
"That the reasons why we create are a lot more difficult to plumb versus the reasons how we create. But I have always felt that in art making, why we make something is much more important and much more of interest than how we did it."
Source: LensWork Podcast LW0311, “Motivations Versus Mechanics”.
Creativity > General Quote #265
"I’ve felt, for some time, that the next new hard in photography is the true potential of photography. That is exploring the human soul. Creating in photographs great passion."
Source: Lenswork Podcast LW0319, “The Next (Difficult) Frontier”.
Photography > Photographer Quote #266
"Writing is not about words. Painting is not about pigment. Music is not about tones. As long as photographers insist that photography is about photographs, the art is limited and self-containing!"
"What is the single most important factor of making a connection with a viewer? ... It is, quote honestly, not your photograph. It is the state of mind of the viewer. ... One of the greatest challenges we have as photographers is putting our work in front of people at at time when their mind is receptive to photographic artwork. When their mind is receptive to seeing what it is that we are presenting."
Source: LensWork Podcast LW0391, "The Receptive Mind"
Photography > Photographer Quote #422
"You don't know if you've gone far enough until you go too far and then you work back a couple of steps."
Source: LensWork Podcast LW0387, "Made of Steel, Revisited #3"
Photography > Technique Quote #423
"Learning something about the history of photography and finding somebody that spoke to me esthetically was a very important part of my discovering this passion in my life."
Source: LensWork Podcast LW0005, "How Protozoans Led Me to Ansel Adams"
Photography > Photographer Quote #424
"The market is the solution to being able to afford your next project. ... Today's commercial success fuels tomorrows creative ideas and creative projects."
Source: LensWork Podcast LW0004, "The Market as a Source of Financing"
Photography > Business Quote #425
"... realize that creating artwork is a real-time thing, not a future thing. And that there's real virtue in finishing today's vision today because tomorrow your vision will probably be different."
Source: LensWork Podcast LW0015, "Old Negatives".
Creativity > Creating Quote #426
"Don't let the medium that your using determine how you see. Let how you see determine how you use the medium."
Source: LensWork Podcast LW0021, "How the Medium Determines the Answer"
Creativity > General Quote #427
"I think that's part of the confusion of photography too. Is the fact that the role of photographer can be both objective observer and creator of something."
Source: LensWork Podcast LW0022, "Taking Versus Making"
Photography > Photographer Quote #428
"We often can work best--photographically, creatively, visually--when we work with what we are surrounded with, what we are immersed in. ... Look at what's around us everyday, because there may be the seeds of wonderful artwork right in front of us."
Source: LensWork Podcast LW0228, "Immersion as Composition"
Creativity > General Quote #430
"When you see it, photograph it. Don't wait. It may not be there when you find you're ready to make the picture."
Source: LensWork Podcast LW0227, "Before It's Gone"
Photography > General Quote #431
"We never see a photograph all at once. Our vision doesn't work that way. ... We have to look at all the parts of the photograph and then assemble it in our minds eye. This is the one of the fascinating things about good art work. It always brings forth that element of imagination and requires you to use your mind to really see it, because your eye can't possible see it all."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Ryoanji". LensWork Podcast, LW0045
Photography > General Quote #440
"We should never forget as creative photographers that our creative vision may survive us by tens or maybe even hundreds of years. And that what we are creating is not just a photography, but a legacy of our minds and our creativity."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "A Legacy in Our Photographs". LensWork Podcast LW0051.
Photography > Photographer Quote #441
"Creativity is a very difficult thing; it consumes a lot of energy and takes a great deal of focus. It's not easy to be creative. But, my experience is that it is infinitely compounded when life around you ... is complicating the issue by making it more difficult to work. ... My creativity is enhanced to the extent that I'm organized. ... It just makes the process of being creative easier because then all of that creativity can blossom in that nice clean slate that starts with organization."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Organization". LensWork Podcast LW0054.
Creativity > General Quote #442
"Not that it difficult to photograph mundane things, but it's difficult to see them as significant. ... The hard thing to do of course is to find a way to photograph a mundane subject or a mundane event in a way that makes it exciting."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Mundate Events and Things". LensWork Podcast LW0055.
Photography > Technique Quote #443
"So, it is necessary to understand this image in it's time, or it gets completely mis-understood in our time. So maybe, we photographers need to think about this and know that our images are going to have to be explained 50, 100, 200, or 500 years from now. Just like Shakespeare or Renaissance paintings need to be explained to us today."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Explaining Artwork Is Not Necissarily a Bad Thing". LensWork Podcast LW0062.
Photography > Photographer Quote #444
"All the great fine art photograph in the world share this common theme of being an intersection between an image and an idea. ... It's ideas that are the source of great photographs, not merely time and place."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "More Than a Mere Record". LensWork Podcast LW0064.
Photography > General Quote #445
"When somehow the atmosphere becomes alive with fog, or clouds, or rain, or lightening, or dust blown in the air, or high puffy clouds in the sky...that's the time that great photographs can be made outdoors. Isn't it interesting what an important component of photographs is the simple atmosphere in which we live. That's supposedly transparent but becomes alive in a photograph in when it's not."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Fog". LensWork Podcast LW0104
Photography > General Quote #466
"The more time I spend making picture, the more time I spend printing picture, the more time I spend working with pictures the greater the chances are that I'll be witj the camera or in the dark room when the creative muse strikes. Then the challenge is to simple be receptive to it."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Creativity on Demand". LensWork Podcast LW0081.
Photography > Photographer Quote #467
"Look at the photographs, look at them carefully. Let the composition and the subject matter determine the aspect ratio. That's the ultimate authority. Not the camera manufacturer. Not the film manufacturer."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Aspect Ratios". LensWork Podcast LW0082.
Photography > Technique Quote #468
"There is no doubt in my mind that living with a photograph for a while, before you make the final print, will always change the image. Most often, for the better."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Living With It". LensWork Podcast LW0087.
Photography > Technique Quote #469
"The minute I start trying to avoid the bad stuff, I'm also going to throw the baby out with the bath water. Because the good stuff will stop being produced too."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Van Morrison and Paul Caponigro". LensWork Podcast LW0096.
Creativity > Creating Quote #470
"Sometimes the best way to get rid of something that is plaguing your mind is just to photograph it, so that your free to move on."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Getting it Out of the Way". LensWork Podcast LW0097.
Photography > Technique Quote #471
"If you want to make a photograph special and precious, make a better photograph. The white gloves don't add anything to a bad photograph."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "The Preciousness of It All". LensWork Podcast LW0100.
Photography > Technique Quote #472
"So why are Picture square? ... An example of a simple question, with a complicated answer. And maybe, just maybe, an opportunity for creativity."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Why are Photographs Quadrilaterals". LensWork Podcast LW0101.
Photography > General Quote #473
"...the best photographs you make will be the things you are most passionate about. Go photograph those things that you really care about deeply. And they will probably be much better photographs than the photographs you make about things that you are not truly, deeply passionate."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Passion". LensWork Podcast LW0105.
Photography > General Quote #474
"All of these images, all these computer files, all these negatives that I keep all these years are a sort of cholesterol that clog up the arteries and get in the way of being to focusing on the really good images and really good negatives that I made. So I'm starting to throw out more and more. And as I do so, it's starting to feel really terrific."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Purging Negatives". LensWork Podcast LW0106.
Photography > Photographer Quote #475
"Too much of photography is about photographers. That is to say, the creative act in photography is supposedly the photographer's skill in seeing what others do not, but this is simply not sufficient - and can lead to a lot of trite photography."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Editor's Comments". LensWork, Issue 74, Page 8
Photography > General Quote #477
"Photography is not about what we see; photography is about [what] we make. A person who sees, but can't paint, is not a painter; a painter is someone who creates a painting. A person who hears, but can't write music, is not a composer; a composer is one who creates music. Even so, painting is not about the manipulation of paint; composing is not about the manipulation of notes. In all arts - including photography - what counts is what a person makes, and - most importantly - what a person expresses. It's not seeing, it's expressing that makes photography art."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Editor's Comments". LensWork, Issue 74, Page 8
Photography > General Quote #478
"There is a lesson here for young photographers; you may not realize how important keeping that work is going to be, because 25 to 30 years later you might discover images that you want to print. Don't throw away your negatives!"
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Interview With Bruce Barnbaum", LensWork, Issue 75, Page 59
Photography > Photographer Quote #497
"I had learned a valuable lesson: Show your work to a hundred different people and you will get a hundred different opinions, none of them correct and all of them valid. All their opinions are valid because when someone tells you whether or not they like your work, there is no way to argue with that - to do so would only question their taste, not tell you about your work."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Some Comments on Print Commentaries". LensWork Issue 69, Page 47.
Photography > General Quote #503
"When we're looking at an image - particular one in a publication or one from history - how we would choose to print it is non-sequitur precisely because, in fact, we aren't going to print it. What we have in front of us is the finished piece of work. Therefore, the only important comments that we can make, the only useful comments that we can make, are about the work as it exists now. There is a great deal we can bring to the discussion - our reactions to it, our interpretation of it, the context, the background - all of this is fair game. But, how we would change it in order to improve it seems to me to be fundamentally unimportant, at best, and a silly distraction, at worst."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Some Comments on Print Commentaries". LensWork Issue 69, Page 47.
Photography > Technique Quote #505
"That's one of the problems of photography, it tends to be a surface sort of thing if we are not careful. Because it's just snap a picture and move on; take a picture and move on. Make a picture of what something looks like, but that's not at all what photography is. We have to learn to photograph not what it is but what else it is."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Talk at the Wilson Center for the Arts, Sep 2007". LensWork Podcast LW0420.
Photography > General Quote #507
"The camera is, at it's root, a complex recording device. It is a mirror to the world - and a reasonably efficient machine for making images copies of the world it reflects. The camera is not a creative being, but the human who wields it is."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Editor's Comments: The Pragmatics of Creativity". LensWork Issue 71, Page 9.
Photography > Equipment Quote #544
"The creative photographer is a seer, in both senses of that word. In short, the art of seeing is what defines the creative photographer as compared to the merely competent one."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Editor's Comments: The Pragmatics of Creativity". LensWork Issue 71, Page 9.
Photography > Photographer Quote #545
"The essence of creative photography is in us - not in the camera, not in the subject, not in the technology, not in the photographic artifact. And, by extension, because each one of us is a different and unique person, our response to a place - i.e., a photographic subject - is (or can be) unique, too."
Source: Jensen, Brooks. "Editor's Comments: The Pragmatics of Creativity". LensWork Issue 71, Page 9.
Photography > General Quote #546
"I've always felt there are a large reservoir of people who have wonderful artistic vision but who lack the technical skills to manifest their vision in a recalcitrant and stubborn medium where molecules and the rules of physics and chemistry conspire to make things difficult. "
"A face is not a portrait. My feeling is that a portrait of someone is not just what they look like, but include who they are."
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