#Family of Man

“Photography for me is not looking, it’s feeling. If you can’t feel what you’re looking at, then you’re never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures”

~ Don McCullin

“My Credo, my way of life, my very being is based on images capable of engraving themselves indelibly in our inner soul’s eye. Also, through my personal vision, to reveal what cannot be readily seen, to capture what is most meaningful, to enrich our appreciation of life. It is to explore and celebrate the human condition and the world around us, nature and man together, to find significance in suffering and all that is profound, beautiful and nourishes the soul. Above all, I believe in creative work through struggle to increase human wisdom and happiness”~ Louis Stettner(1922 - 2016)

“I was very sensitive to poverty, to children and people in need. I probably had a more compassionate way of looking at things”

 

~ Sabine Weiss
(1924-2021)

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“Throughout my life I’ve never pursued anything. I just let things pursue me, they just show up. This is the way I’ve lead my life, not just in photography but in life”

 

~ Manuel Álvarez Bravo
(1902-2002)

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“Photography is nothing - it’s life that interests me”

 

~ Henri Cartier-Bresson
(1908-2004)

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“I’ve entered into an unspoken, unwritten, and generally inscrutable pact with the people I have photographed and lived amongst. If I promise not to tell all I know about them, they will do the same for me”

~ Kurt Markus

(1947 - 2022)

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"Perhaps the most important thing to note about this haunting photograph is that it was not fabricated by the artist. The woman was a waif who had been given shelter by the caretaker of a remote ranch in Big Sur. It was a favorite site for Bullock and he had become friends with her, occasionally giving her work as a model. Earlier in the day, Bullock had been shaken by a strong premonition that she would eventually be forced to give up her son. When she put him on the bed for a nap and then moved to the edge of it, the premonition seemed to come to life before his eyes. It should also be noted that the book on the window sill that gives the photograph its title is a classic text on how to make one’s way across dark waters."

 

~ Chris Johnson and Barbara Bullock-Wilson
from Wynn Bullock: 55, Phaidon Press, 2001

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“One must always take photos with the greatest respect for the subject and for oneself”

~ Henri Cartier Bresson

“He was the Tolstoy of Photography with profound humanity. He was the witness of the 20th Century”

~ Richard Avedon

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“A photograph fulfills my deep need to stop things from disappearing”

 

~ Dorothy Bohm
1924 - 2023

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“A good photograph becomes something more than just a good photograph. It has meaning and value that extends beyond the medium itself. Something spiritual that reveals something about life”

 

~ Louis Stettner
(1922-2016)

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"There’s a contemplative or meditative quality to photography, which I find to be a sort of peaceful state. When I’m walking around photographing, I get into a particular mindset where I become much more attuned to the world around me."

 

~ Steve McCurry

“It is through living that we discover ourselves, at the same time as we discover the world around us”

 

~ Henri Cartier-Bresson
(1908 - 2004)

“I have been poor and I wanted to document poverty. I had lost a child and I was obsessed with birth. I was interested in politics and I wanted to know how it affected our lives. I am a woman and I wanted to know about women”

 

~ Eve Arnold
(1912-2012)

“Photography teaches us to see, and we can see whatever we wish. When I take a photograph, I make a wish. I was always looking for beauty.”

 

~ George Tice

“For me the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which in visual terms, questions and decides simultaneously. In order to give a meaning to the world, one has to feel involved in what one frames through the viewfinder. This attitude requires concentration, discipline of mind, sensitivity and a sense of geometry. It is by economy of means that one arrives at simplicity of expression"

 

~ Henri Cartier-Bresson
(1908 - 2004)

“You can find pictures anywhere. It’s simply a matter of noticing things and organizing them. You just have to care about what’s around you and have a concern with humanity and the human comedy”

 

~ Eliott Erwitt

'In viewing the images in Devotion and at Peter Fetterman Gallery, I can only conclude that if, as the saying goes, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.,” then I’d revise that to say “Beauty is in the eye of Steve McCurry.'

 

~ Tom Teicholz

John Edward Saché arrived in Calcutta from the United States of America in the latter part of 1864. As the capital of British India, Calcutta provided an optimal environment for photographers to establish their businesses. Saché would spend his summers operating from his studio nestled in the hills, where many sought refuge from the oppressive heat, and return to the plains during the pleasant winter months.Over the course of nearly two decades spent in India, John Edward Saché produced over 500 images and ran a successful enterprise, elevating him to the ranks of the foremost photographers of his time. His extensive travels throughout northern India encompassed major landmarks and towns, resulting in a rich collection of images that showcased his mastery of picturesque compositions.

“It is important that you respect what you are photographing."

 

~ Sebastião Salgado

“In general I don’t think too much. I certainly don’t use those funny words museum people and art critics like”

 

~ Elliott Erwitt
(1928 - 2023)

“Think about the photo before and after, never during. The secret is to take your time. You mustn’t go too fast. The subject must forget about you.Then however, you must be very quick”

 

~ Henri Cartier-Bresson
(1908-2004)

“It felt as if the end were nigh. With the sun obliterated by a dark smoked Dantean landscape stretched as far as the eye could see. The horizon itself was marked by torches of fire where burning oil leapt from the lifeless desert. And all around, thick pillars of crude oil spewed into the sky before falling back to earth to form treacly black lakes that, without warning, could become gigantic infernos. Finally there was the noise, a deafening roar that only grew louder as I came closer to the source of this cataclysm, the hundreds of oil wells that had been sabotaged and set alight by the Iraqi army near the end of its occupation of Kuwait between early August 1990 and late 1991".

 

~ Sebastião Salgado
Kuwait. A Desert on Fire.

"Taking photographs is a means of understanding which cannot be separated from other means of visual expression. It is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one’s originality. It is a way of life."

~Henri Cartier-Bresson
(1908-2004)

“People always ask me “How do you relate to people. How do you get people to open up and relax?" I think it is just a question of experience. I think it’s a question of enjoying being with people.”

 

~ Steve McCurry

“Most important was the outdoor studio that was Paris. I would take long daily walks with my camera, leaving myself open to what ever happened around me. Sometimes I am asked why I did it. There was no economic basis and the possibility of recognition was slight. I suppose I was drawn by a great need and love to get close to the world around me. Each photograph was a way of reaching out and an act of discovery”

 

~ Louis Stettner (1922-2006)

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"We shall overcome because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice."

 

~ Martin Luther King Jr.
Washington National Cathedral, March 31, 1968

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“I believe that, through the act of living, the discovery of oneself is made concurrently with the discovery of the world around us”

 

~ Henri Cartier-Bresson
(1908-2004)

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“Photography is nothing. It’s life that interests me"

 

~ Henri Cartier-Bresson

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“Photography is much more than just taking pictures – it is a way of life. What you feel, what you want to express, is your ideology and your ethics. It’s a language that allows you to travel over the wave of history.”

 

~ Sebastião Salgado

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"Photography is a unique visual language that cannot be expressed in words. As a matter of fact, if it can be expressed in words, then it probably isn’t worth photographing."

 

~ Charles Harbutt

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"They were getting ready for their annual Village Fete and the lady was calling a friend to get the recipe for some tarts to bake. Her little girl had been in a phone box and found out that if you pressed Button B then sometimes money came out (Do you remember the old UK phone boxes?). The Mother therefore told the child that she had to face outwards and keep her hands off the buttons. I heard this story more than 50 years later when I showed the pictures in Pembridge Village Hall and I met the former child. This picture was on the cover of the Sunday Times issue”

 

~ John Bulmer

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"All I ask you to do is to listen with your eyes. The international language of jazz and photography need no special education or sophistication to be enjoyed."

 

~ William Claxton

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“There’s a time for photographs that say “hello”. And there’s a time to listen”

 

~ Elliott Erwitt
(1928-2023)

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“Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”

 

~ James Baldwin

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"...Jacques Lowe was monumentally self-effacing. This, I believe, is why his camera caught so much human truth. There are no orchestrated 'photo-opportunities here..."

 

~ Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
American Historian and Social Critic
(1917 - 2007)

“I’ve had the privilege of being an outsider allowed on the inside searching for beauty, meaning and myself”

 

~ Bruce Davidson

“The working class for me was the most important element of industrial and agricultural production.”

 

~ Sebastião Salgado

“W. Eugene Smith’s photo essays taught me that a photograph could not only communicate emotion, but could also save the human condition”

 

~ Bruce Davidson

"I often think of my work as visual haiku. It is an attempt to evoke and suggest through as few elements as possible rather than to describe with tremendous detail."

~ Michael Kenna

“Said to be the most beautiful temple in South Korea, the Beopjusa Monastery, tucked in among the lush green hills of Songnisan National Park, was founded in AD 553. The name means ‘temple in which resides the teaching of the Buddha’, and the monastery is dedicated to the worship of Maitreya, the Future Buddha. As this image reveals, it is a place of peace and deep contemplation. ”

~ Steve McCurry

"I have seen many manifestations of faith during my travels over the past three decades. Some have been spontaneous, some have been part of a liturgy, some have been prescribed rituals, some have been in magnificent buildings, others have been outside under a tree. Many people's faith is embedded in the way they live their lives."

 

~ Steve McCurry

"I spent the day at a wedding with this family in Sana'a, Yemen. As the father and uncle left late in the afternoon, the boy seemed tired and bored. It reminded me what it was like to go to adult events when I was young, and longing to be out playing. It's a tradition in Yemen for men to wear a Jambiya, a curved dagger, around their waist. It is typically given to sons by their fathers."

~ Steve McCurry

"You get not only a picture of who you're photographing, but you get a picture of yourself at the same time."

~ Bruce Davidson

“The purpose of life is to contribute in some way to making things better."

~ Robert Francis Kennedy
(1925 - 1968)

“Someday you will know that a father is much happier in his children’s happiness than in his own. I cannot explain it to you: it is a feeling in your body that spreads gladness through you.”

~ Honore de Balzac
(Le Père Goriot, 1835)

"I am not ashamed to say that no man I ever met was my father's equal, and I never loved any other man as much."

 

~ Hedy Lamarr

“To me photography is an art of observation. It’s about finding something interesting in an ordinary place. I’ve found it has little to do with the things you see and everything to do with the way you see them"

 

~ Elliott Erwitt

"Mothers hold their children's hands for a short while, but their hearts forever."

 

~ Unknown

“The ideal picture tells something of the essence of life. It sums up emotion, it holds the feeling of movement thereby implying the continuity of life. It shows some aspect of humanity, the way that the person who looks at the picture will at once recognize as startlingly true”

 

~ Bert Hardy

"Mother's love, that divine gift which comforts, purifies, and strengthens all who seek it."

~ Louisa May Alcott

“My work begins with recording an image, but it is not finished until I have made a fine print. That is my photograph. A lot goes into a finished documentary photograph, a very personal view of life, a knowledge of technique and of course, information. It is the information that gets the viewer, but it is the photographer’s art that holds them."

~ George Zimbel

“If you choose your subject selectively, intuitively, the camera can write poetry.”

 

~ Harry Callahan

 

“If I knew how to take a good photograph, I’d do it every time”

~ Robert Doisneau
1912-1994

“I always felt the difference between New York and Paris is that Paris nourishes you by the fact that it is very beautiful.You see living history all around you. The whole flavor of the place is one of harmony and beauty. It raises the human spirit"

 

~ Louis Stettner

“The key to artistic photography is to work out your own thoughts, by yourself. Imitation leads to certain disaster. New ideas are always antagonized. Do not mind that. If a thing is good it will survive”

 

~ Gertrude Käsebier
(1853-1934)

“Just like the thunderbolt of first love or a first glance wipes away everything else and creates a kind of emptiness, I swear that at the precise moment of clicking the shutter, I have no forethought, no desire, no intention, no memory. The subject has taken hold of me: this is the impulse of acting without self interest. It happens in a moment. I am open, this opening lets in the fleeting moment when everything is bathed in the same light. This is how artists, painters, musicians, photographers - truly know themselves. Deep down they feel the same thrill as everyone else. The first glance is complete, in the light of the whole. I take portraits of light”

~ Edouard Boubat
(1923 - 1999)

“I just get the will to do it. I don’t plan a photograph in advance… I work by impulse. No philosophy. No ideas. Not by the head but by the eyes. Eventually inspiration comes - instinct is the same as inspiration, and eventually it comes.”

 

~ Manuel Alvarez Bravo (Mexico, b. 1902-2002)

"The models are friends of mine: these photographs involve moments of complicity that only a friend could accept. If there is no fondness between the model and the photographer, this kind of work cannot be done."

 

~ Flor Garduño

“I think that a photograph to be strong has to recount some aspect of the human condition, enable us to feel the emotion that the photographer felt before her subject”

 

~ Sabine Weiss

Bruce is one of the great Magnum photographers best known for his gritty urban work. This is a rare gem in his archive. Full of wonderment, humanity and hope.

Wynn Bullock, to my mind, is one the greatest 20th Century photographers. Often eclipsed by his more well known contemporaries, Edward Weston and Ansel Adams.  This is a haunting portrait of his mother’s hands taken in his modest house in Carmel in 1956. The beauty of the print just knocks me out and is the definition of the word “primal”.

Jerusalem has been, and is, the spiritual home to three major religions: Judaism, Christianity and Islam. To say it is a magical place is a great understatement.

I have seen and collected many images of The Holy Land but this recent acquisition is I think the greatest I have ever seen taken at this special place. I believe it to be a unique print. It is as if Irving Penn had been transported back in time.