David duChemin

“It’s the difference between your wife’s passport photograph and the portraits you took when you gotengaged. Both may have been created with similar technology, but what stands in that great gulf between them are the passion you have for your wife, the knowledge you have of her personality, and your willingness to use your craft, time, and energy to express that. One says, “She looks like this.” The other says, “This is who she is to me. It’s how I feel about her. See how amazing she is?”

“A representational photograph says, 'This is what Vienna looked like.' An interpretational photograph goes one better and says, 'This is what Vienna was like. This is how I felt about it.”

“The cliché comes not in what you shoot but in how you shoot it.”

“Photographing a culture in the here and now often means photographing the intersection of the present with the past.”

“Anyone can take a picture of poverty; it’s easy to focus on the dirt and hurt of the poor. It’s much harder—and much more needful—to pry under that dirt and reveal the beauty and dignity of people that, but for their birth into a place and circumstance different from our own, are just like ourselves. I want my images to tell the story of those people and to move us beyond pity to justice and mercy.”

“الرؤية هي كلّّ شيء، وغاية الرحلة الفوتوغرافية هي اكتشاف رؤيتك، وتمكينها من التطوّر، والتغيّر، والعثور على أسلوب التعبير من خلال الكاميرا والصورة المطبوعة. إنها ليست شيئاً تعثر عليه وتقبله مرة واحدة وبشكل نهائي؛ إنها شيء يتغيّر وينمو معك. إن الأشياء التي تثيرك، والتي تغضبك، والتي تُحركك تعتبر جزءًا من رؤيتك الفريدة. إنها مسألة تتعلّق بما تجده أنت -كشخص فريد من بين بلايين الناس- جميلاً أو قبيحاً، صحيحاً أو خاطئاً، شاذّاً أو منسجماً في هذا العالم. وفي أثناء مواجهتك للحياة، تتغيّر رؤيتك. القصص التي تريد روايتها، الأشياء التي لها وقع وصدى في نفسك؛ كلها تتغيّر وكذلك رؤيتك. إن العثور على رؤيتك والتعبير عنها هما الرحلة، وليس الوجهة.”

“Consider this your permission to indulge that inner anarchist. Stop following the path you ought to take; follow instead the one you long to take.”

“On the odd days Auto Tone gets it right I assume it's using some kind of voodoo.”

“You yourself are unique--you have ways of seeing your world that are unlike those of anyone else--so find ways to more faithfully express that, and your style will emerge.”

“Take a moment. What was it you saw when you were moved to pick up the camera? I'm going to pretend I didn't hear you mutter something about thinking "it looked cool." Dig deeper. Was it a thought, a feeling, a simple moment when your eyes did a double-take at the intersection of two lines? Was it a lick of light, two blocks of color?”

“Vision is that original spark that was ignited within you and made you pick up a camera to capture whatever it is you saw, that made you turn to shout "Did you see that!" only to find no one there--so you created an image to do the telling.”

“Photographers, like few other kinds of artists I can imagine, have an insanelypersonal relationship with their gear.”

“The story is told of Michelangelo being asked about his methods for sculpting.He replied simply that he worked on a block of marble, removing all that was notpart of the sculpture until only the sculpture remained. I suspect this oversimplifiesthe art of sculpture, but it’s an excellent analogy for photography, which isessentially an art of exclusion.”