Quotes by
Edward Weston

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

Very often people looking at my pictures say, 'You must have had to wait a long time to get that cloud just right (or that shadow, or the light).' As a matter of fact, I almost never wait, that is, unless I can see that the thing will be right in a few minutes. But if I must wait an hour for the shadow to move, or the light to change, or the cow to graze in the other direction, then I put up my camera and go on, knowing that I am likely to find three subjects just as good in the same hour.

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

Now to consult the rules of composition before making a picture is a little like consulting the law of gravitation before going for a walk. Such rules and laws are deduced from the accomplished fact; they are the products of reflection...

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 spirtit of inquiry, of communion, instead of with the saucy swagger of self-dubbed "artists"

I have been photographing our toilet, that glossy enameled receptacle of extraordinary beauty....Here was every sensuous curve of the 'human figure divine' but minus the imperfections. Never did the Greeks reach a more significant consummation to their culture, and it somehow reminded me, forward movement of finely progressing contours, of the Victory of Samothrace.

My true program is summed up in one word: life. I expect to photograph anything suggested by that word which appeals to me.

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.

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

...to reveal the individual before his camera, to transfer the living quality of that individual to his finished print...Not to make road maps but to record the essential truth of the subject; not to show how this person looks, but to show what he is.

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.

I see no reason for recording the obvious.

[Photographers claimed to be performing the Blakean task of cleansing the senses,] revealing to others the living world around them showing to them what their own unseeing eyes had missed.

She leaned against a whitewashed wall--lips quivering--nostrils dilating--eyes heavy with the gloom of unspent rain clouds--I drew close to her--whispered something and kissed her--a tear rolled down her cheek--and then I captured forever the moment--let me see f.8--1/10 sec. K1 filter--panchromatic film--how brutally mechanical and calculated it sounds--yet how really spontaneous and genuine--for I have so overcome the mechanics of my camera that it functions responsive to my desires--my shutter coordinating with my brain is released in a way—as natural as I might move my arm--I am beginning to approach actual attainment in photography--that in my ego of two or three years ago I thought to have already reached--it will be necessary for me to destroy, to unlearn, and then rebuild upon the mistaken presumptuousness of my past--the moment of our mutual emotion was recorded on the silver—the release of those emotions followed--we passed from the glare of the sun on white walls into Tina’s darkened room--her olive skin and sombre nipples were revealed beneath a black mantilla--I drew the lace aside.

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.

The shutter’s release, which automatically and finally fixes my conception, allowing no after manipulation – the print, which is but a dublication of all that I saw and felt through my camera.

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.'

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

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.

..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...

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.

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.

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.

Get your lighting and exposure correct at the start and both developing and printing can be practically automatic.

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.

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.

Anything that excites me, for any reason, I will photograph: not searching for unusual subject matter but making the commonplace unusual, nor indulging in extraordinary technique to attract attention. Work only when desire to the point of necessity impels – then do it honestly. Then so called “composition” becomes a personal thing, to be developed along with technique, as a personal way of seeing.

But photography is not all seeing in the sense that the eyes see. Our vision, a binocular one, is in a continuous state of flux, while the camera captures and fixes forever (unless the damn prints fade !) a single, isolated condition of the moment. Besides, we use lenses of various focal lengths to purposely exaggerate actual seeing, and we often “overcorrect” color for the same reason. In printing we carry on our willful distortion of fact by using contrasty papers which give results quite different from the sense or object as it was in nature.

Our sensibilities today are not fooled by the novelty of the camera process; modern men clearly feel the individual personality of each of the authors of different photographs, although made at the same time and in the same space. We feel the personality of the photographer as clearly as that of the painter, draughtsman, or printmaker. Actually, camera and darkroom manipulations are a technique, like oil, pencil, or watercolor; and, above all, the means of expression of human personality.

The... 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: a chance word or phrase starts a new trend of thought in a writer, a chance sound may bring a new melody to a musician, a chance combination of lines, new composition to a painter. ...Chance – which in reality is not chance – but being ready, attuned to one's surroundings – and grasp my opportunity....

...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. (referring to his famous photo "Pepper #30")"

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

Of course, I hear that I must have a marvelous lens or extraordinary camera – instead of a lens with shutter for all of 20 pesos, and a camera quite gone to ruin! Not many realize that good photographs – like anything else – are made with one’s brains.

A painter of prolific imagination might not be able to execute a hundredth of his ideas on canvas in a lifetime because of the time consumed by his recording process. But for the photographer seeing and recording are almost simultaneous. His output is limited only by his ability to see. For this reason it has always been my belief that an experienced photographer, given the means to devote himself entirely to creative expression, should be able to produce a tremendous amount of valuable work.

Photography is the strongest way of seeing.

Composition is the strongest way of seeing.

I lived for the hours when I could be alone with it.

Should we use "abstract" in describing a photograph ?... The most abstract line or form, of necessity is based on actuality— derived from nature, even as God is pictured a glorified man... To keep one's feet planted to terra firma is to keep the head poised and receptive.