"This sense of quickness, of being alive on this earth, of simple orgasmic sense perception, is the point at which great photographs are made. Photographs come from that moment in the process of cognition before the mind has analyzed meaning or the eyes design and at which the experience and the person experiencing are fully, intuitively, existentially there. Such images look like photographs, not paintings: there is a tremendous sense of stopped time, of the blinking shutter, of being alive and still there, of discovery (rather than analysis), of chance, not design, of quick emotion from an uncertain cause. Photography is at its best when it deals with the very act of seeing in itself and not with recollections in tranquility or dilletantism of design."
- Charles Harbutt
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Great blog, and great quote. It's interesting that the sentiments described while he was President of Magnum almost foreshadowed him leaving the agency. I think his early photograph of a girl from a poor family in Rolla, Missouri is a great example of that "instinctive" feeling he describes before cognition- and recognition- kick in.
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