Group f.64 Quotes

“As to “Aesthetic Considerations,” Ansel counseled, “A photograph that is merely a superficial record of the subject fails as an aesthetic expression of that subject. The expression must be an emotional amplification, and this emotional amplification relates to point of view, organization, revelation of substance through textures, tonal relations, and the perfection of the technical expression of all these elements.”54”
― Mary Street Alinder, Group f.64: Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and the Community of Artists Who Revolutionized American Photography

“Group f.64 believed that photographic beauty was defined by beautiful prints produced by purely photographic means. The subjects need not be beautiful. What might appear ugly or commonplace could have value through the respectful understanding and expression of the photographer.”
― Mary Street Alinder, Group f.64: Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and the Community of Artists Who Revolutionized American Photography

“Edward counseled that a photograph of consequence could be made from just about anything. Subject matter, in itself, was not critical. The understanding of the photographer was.”
― Mary Street Alinder, Group f.64: Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and the Community of Artists Who Revolutionized American Photography

“Even their environments were opposites, and that matters. A painter can paint anywhere; the subject can spring from the painter’s mind. Photographers must be in the presence of their subjects. Stieglitz lived in and photographed a long-tamed landscape, from his skyscraper forests to the fenced pastures of his family’s summerhouse outside the city. Edward could see the snow-capped San Gabriel Mountains from his front porch, and even Los Angeles had been wilderness not that long before.”
― Mary Street Alinder, Group f.64: Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and the Community of Artists Who Revolutionized American Photography

“The important and only vital question is, how much greater, finer, am I than I was yesterday? Have I fulfilled my possibilities, made the most of my potentialities. What a marvelous world if all would, could hold this attitude toward life.34”
― Mary Street Alinder, Group f.64: Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and the Community of Artists Who Revolutionized American Photography

“Although Reed tried valiantly, the income from print sales never balanced out the high cost of framing, advertising, printing announcements, and the rent on New York’s prestigious gallery row, West Fifty-seventh Street. She confessed that the Delphic Studios were “a philanthropic endeavor rather than a business enterprise” and that, sadly, “sales were so infrequent as to make hope of any return at all from commissions a remote possibility.”
― Mary Street Alinder, Group f.64: Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and the Community of Artists Who Revolutionized American Photography

“Breton, heavily influenced by Sigmund Freud, believed that art should be freed from the brake placed on creativity by the conscious mind.”
― Mary Street Alinder, Group f.64: Edward Weston, Ansel Adams, Imogen Cunningham, and the Community of Artists Who Revolutionized American Photography