[1897 – 1965] American photographer
Scroll down
Dedicated to the real photographers of the world - to those who, with their second-hand equipment and their makeshift darkrooms, are today fighting their solitary battles with their recalcitrant medium, not for money or for glory, but because they would rather make pictures than anything else in the world.
"Mortensen on the Negative", by William Mortensen, Simon and Schuster, 1940.
A well directed sitting will have something of the quality of a good plan - a constant building and development of tension and excitement. The interest of the model and artist should both be carried along in the current of common enthusiasm. To make the sitting move in this way, the artist must work, must give of himself. An artist who finishes a sitting with his respiration, pulse and the part of his hair unaltered, has probably obtained very poor results.
The Model - A Book on the Problems of Posing, Cameracraft Publishing 1937 p.196
Photographers have for a long time been gazing with hypnotic absorption at this mechanical-optical marvel, the camera. Let them lift their eyes and consider that which is in front of the camera. There awaits the model - Mona Lisa in the person of Mary Jones. What are they going to do with her? It would be well if photographers could forget for awhile the expensive camera and it's marvelous insides and the impressive array of chemicals in the closet under the stairs, and concentrate solely and definitely on the model. For it is through the model - whether it be a goat or a duchess - that life is made to stir in the dead substance of the picture.
The Model - A Book On The Problems Of Posing 1937 p19.
