Quotes by
Ruth Bernhard

My quest, through the magic of light and shadow, is to isolate, to simplify and to give emphasis to form with the greatest clarity. To indicate the ideal proportion, to reveal sculptural mass and the dominating spirit is my goal.

The ground we walk on, the plants and creatures, the clouds above constantly dissolving into new formations - each gift of nature possessing its own radiant energy, bound together by cosmic harmony.

If you are not passionately devoted to an idea, you can make very pleasant pictures but they won't make you cry.

For me, the creation of a photograph is experienced as a heightened emotional response, most akin to poetry and music, each image the culmination of a compelling impulse I cannot deny. Whether working with a human figure or a still life, I am deeply aware of my spiritual connection with it. In my life, as in my work, I am motivated by a great yearning for balance and harmony beyond the realm of human experience, reaching for the essence of oneness with the Universe.

Everything is one and I am one with it.

A person cannot learn to be a photographer. He can only cultivate what he already has. I try to make people aware that they have something very precious to cultivate.

For me the creation of a photograph is experienced as a heightened emotional response, most akin to poetry and music, each image the culmination of a compelling impulse I cannot deny.

I expect photographs to find me. I never thought of looking for them. I instinctively put them (props) there. My intellect had nothing to do with it.

Every artist, in a sense, is missionary. He tries to convey a message to his fellow man – he communicates the awesome presence of truth and beauty he discover in the world around him, in its lakes and mountains, trees, rocks and plants, in its living creatures. Down through the centuries poets, sculptors, painters and now photographers, have also been striving to grasp and immortalize the beauty of the human body, both male and female. I see in these forms the elemental relationship to the large forms of nature; a sense of strength like a rock – fluidity like water – space like a mountain range. If I have chosen the female form in particular, it is because beauty has been debased and exploited in our sensual twentieth century. We seem to have a need to turn innocent nature into evil ugliness be the twist of the mind. Woman has been target of much that is sordid and cheap, especially in photography. To raise, to elevate, to endorse with timeless reverence the image of woman, has been my mission – the reason for my work.

If you're not interested in life, then photography has no meaning.

Looking at everything as if for the first time reveals the commonplace to be utterly incredible. Each animate and inanimate part of the whole seems to exist in a tight network, interdependent and timeless. I consider a minute insect, a mountain range, and a human body of equal significance.

I always said “yes” to everything.

Fall in love. Every day. With everything. With life. If you can fall in love, you can be a photographer. I think that is absolutely essential.

I was completely uninhibited in my first photographic efforts. I had no notion of how a photograph should be made or should look, or that there were certain things that “couldn’t be done” or were absolutely défendu. I did as I pleased, and I made pictures only of things that held my personal feelings.

I make only one negative when photographing a nude or still life. The moment of exposure is the culmination of rejecting all other possibilities. It often takes me many hours to make a photograph.

Light is my inspiration, my paint and brush. It is as vital as the model herself. Profoundly significant, it caresses the essential superlative curves and lines. Light I acknowledge as the energy upon which all life on this planet depends.

Today is the day!

If you are not willing to see more than is visible, you won't see anything.

I never question what to do, it tells me what to do. The photographs make themselves with my help.

There is no such thing as taking too much time, because your soul is in that picture.

Light is my inspiration. My photographic images search for dimensions that words cannot touch-- the result of intense responses to personal experiences. I do not wish to "record," but rather to touch upon the illusive meanings which I perceive and try to comprehend in this limitless universe.

You have to follow your instinct all the time. Otherwise you don't make it.

Photography is art when it's used by an artist.

My quest, through the magic of light and shadow, is to isolate, to simplify and to give emphasis to form with the greatest clarity.

My nudes are ideals of my own feelings about being a woman, not an expression of erotic power, or a love object.

I never look for a photograph. The photograph finds me and says, “I'm here!” and I say, “Yes, I see you. I hear you.”

What the human eye sees is an illusion of what is real. The black and white image transforms illusions into another reality.

After all these years, it is still the quality, the mood, the radiance of light which motivates me to work passionately, almost like an obsession.

Often I have struggled for days to get the image of the photograph to overlap the spirit I see. It is an awesome responsibility, and a lonely one.