Tuesday, August 31, 2010

Quote of the Week - Leo Rubinfien, Pictures Without Words

"If you already knew what a great photograph was, you would be doing something you, or someone else, had done before, and in that case, what would be the point? The more things you recognized to be possibilities for pictures, (Winogrand) would say - the more varied these possibilities were - the less you were likely to know in advance whether they'd work. You had to allow yourself to be led by pictures, your own or anyone else's, and the pronouncements of the Artiste, when he encountered them, filled him, I think, with disgust. His refusal to try to translate pictures into words was not, as one writer called it, anti-intellectualism, it came from the supremely intelligent awareness that sophisticated pictures cannot be summed up - that only they themselves can tell you what they mean, that if you could state their meanings in words there would be no need for them."

- Leo Rubinfien

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