Berenice Abbott quotes

Berenice Abbott was an American photographer known for her iconic black-and-white images of New York City and scientific subjects. Her work captured both the dynamic transformation of urban life and advancements in science during the 20th century. She left a lasting legacy in the fields of documentary and scientific photography. Here are 14 of her quotes:

Photography helps people to see.

Berenice Abbott

There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.

Berenice Abbott

I believe there is no more creative medium than photography to recreate the living world of our time. Photography gladly accepts the challenge because it is at home in its element: namely, realism - real life - the now.

Berenice Abbott

I wanted to photograph this subject because the signs' shrieking blatancy literally cried out for a visual record. To my mind the faded, yellowing paper and the red paint were not particularly paint,able. In black and white the signs shouted, clamored for attention, in visual anarchy. At the same time, the shrewd business sense which plastered them solid over the entire window area produced, as it were by chance, an esthetic by-product: the whole has homogeneity and variety of texture, simultaneously, which give the picture interest.

Berenice Abbott

Photography doesn't teach you to express your emotions; it teaches you how to see.

Berenice Abbott

Photography can only represent the present. Once photographed, the subject becomes part of the past.

Berenice Abbott

The camera is no more an instrument of preservation, the image is.

Berenice Abbott

The Baroness was like Jesus Christ and Shakespeare all rolled into one and perhaps she was the most influential person to me in the early part of my life.

Berenice Abbott

People say they have to express their emotions. I'm sick of that. Photography doesn't teach you how to express your emotions; it teaches you how to see.

Berenice Abbott

Does not the very word 'creative' mean to build, to initiate, to give out, to act - rather than to be acted upon, to be subjective? Living photography is positive in its approach, it sings a song of life - not death.

Berenice Abbott

I didn't decide to be a photographer; I just happened to fall into it.

Berenice Abbott

The challenge for me has first been to see things as they are, whether a portrait, a city street, or a bouncing ball. In a word, I have tried to be objective.

Berenice Abbott