41 Most Famous Dorothea Lange Quotes About Photography And Life

Dorothea Lange Quotes

Dorothea Lange was An American Photography who popularized documentary photography during the Great Depression.

She was born on born May 26, 1895, in New Jersey and died on October 11, 1965, in San Francisco, California. Some of her most famous portraits is  Migrant Mother, Nipomo, California (1936) which now hangs in the Library of Congress.

Here are some of Dorothea Lange’s Best and Most Famous quotes about photography And Life.

If you love Dorothea Lange Quotes, you will like Photography Quotes By Famous Photographers like Ansel Adams Quotes, Robert Frank Quotes, and Robert Capa Quotes.

Famous Dorothea Lange Quotes

1. A camera teaches you how to see without a camera. ― Dorothea Lange
2. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. ― Dorothea Lange
3. Seeing is more than a physiological phenomenon… We see not only with our eyes but with all that we are and all that our culture is. The artist is a professional see-er. ― Dorothea Lange
4. While there is perhaps a province in which the photograph can tell us nothing more than what we see with our own eyes, there is another in which it proves to us how little our eyes permit us to see. ― Dorothea Lange
5. It is not enough to photograph the obviously picturesque. ― Dorothea Lange
6. The people who are garrulous and wear their heart on their sleeve and tell you everything, that’s one kind of person, but the fellow who’s hiding behind a tree and hoping you don’t see him is the fellow that you’d better find out why. ― Dorothea Lange
7. A camera is a tool for learning how to see without a camera. ― Dorothea Lange
8. Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion… the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate. ― Dorothea Lange
9. I many times encountered courage, real courage. Undeniable courage. I’ve heard it said that that was the highest quality of the human animal. I encountered that many times, in unexpected places. And I have learned to recognize it when I see it. ― Dorothea Lange
10. One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind. ― Dorothea Lange
11. I believe in living with the camera, and not using the camera. ― Dorothea Lange
12. To know ahead of time what you’re looking for means you’re then only photographing your own preconceptions, which is very limiting, and often false. ― Dorothea Lange
13. A documentary photograph is not a factual photograph. ― Dorothea Lange
14. I believe that what we call beautiful is generally a by-product. ― Dorothea Lange
15. The visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. ― Dorothea Lange
16. No country has ever closely scrutinized itself visually. ― Dorothea Lange
17. “We know by now how to photograph poor people. What we don’t know is how to photograph affluence – whose other face is poverty.” ― Dorothea Lange

Dorothea Lange Quotes About Photography

18. “Put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you.” ― Dorothea Lange
19. “The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects.” ― Dorothea Lange
20. “Photographers stop photographing a subject too soon before they have exhausted the possibilities.” ― Dorothea Lange
21. “My own approach is based upon three considerations. First – hands off! Whenever I photograph I do not molest or tamper with or arrange. Second – a sense of place. I try to picture as part of its surroundings, as having roots. Third – a sense of time.” ― Dorothea Lange
22. “So turning, we in our work can speak more than of our subject – we can speak with them; we can more than speak about our subjects – we can speak for them. They, given tongue, will be able to speak with and for us.” ― Dorothea Lange
23. “The documentary photograph carries with it another thing, a quality in the subject that the artist responds to. It is a photograph which carries the full meaning of the episode or the circumstance or the situation that can only be revealed.” ― Dorothea Lange
24. “That frame of mind that you need to make fine pictures of a very wonderful subject, you cannot do it by not being lost yourself.” ― Dorothea Lange
25. “It is no accident that the photographer becomes a photographer any more than the lion tamer becomes a lion tamer.” ― Dorothea Lange
26. “The best way to go into an unknown territory is to go in ignorant, ignorant as possible, with your mind wide open, as wide open as possible and not having to meet anyone else’s requirement but your own.” ― Dorothea Lange
27. “I realize more and more what it takes to be a really good photographer. You go in over your head, not just up to your neck.” – ‘The Photographs Of Dorothea Lange’. ― Dorothea Lange
28. “Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.” ― Dorothea Lange
29. “You know there are moments such as these when time stands still and all you do is hold your breath and hope it will wait for you.” ― Dorothea Lange
30. “It came to me that what I had to do was to take pictures and concentrate on people, only people, all kinds of people, people who paid me and people who didn’t.” ― Dorothea Lange

Inspirational Dorothea Lange Quotes About Life

31. “Life, for people, begins to crumble on the edges; they don’t realize it.” – ‘Dorothea Lange: Farm Security Administration Photographs, 1935-1939: From The Library Of Congress’. ― Dorothea Lange
32. “The words that come direct from the people are the greatest… If you substitute one out of your own vocabulary, it disappears before your eyes.” – ‘― Dorothea Lange
33. “The contemplation of things as they are, without error of confusion, without substitution or imposture, is in itself a nobler thing than a whole harvest of invention.” ― Dorothea Lange
34. “To me, beauty appears when one feels deeply, and art is an act of total attention.” ― Dorothea Lange
35. “You go into a room and you know where you’re welcome; you know where you’re unwelcome.” ― Dorothea Lange
36. “Surefire things are deadening to the human spirit.” ― Dorothea Lange
37. “Artists are controlled by the life that beats in them, like the ocean beats on the shore.” ― Dorothea Lange
38. “Bring the viewer to your side, include him in your thought. He is not a bystander. You have the power to increase his perceptions and conceptions.” ― Dorothea Lange
39. “I trust my instincts. I don’t distrust them. They haven’t led me astray. It’s when I’ve made up my mind to be efficient that is when I have gone wrong.” ― Dorothea Lange
40. “I think we conjure up and invent people, and then whoever happens to be there is the recipient of our imagination. A good deal of the attraction between people, I think, is based on the fact that one is able to absorb the creation.” ― Dorothea Lange
41. “I would like to see photographers become responsible and photography realize its potential.” ― Dorothea Lange