Alfred Stieglitz

“Photography is not an art. Neither is painting, nor sculpture, literature or music. They are only different media for the individual to express his aesthetic feelings.. .You do not have to be a painter or a sculptor to be an artist. You may be a shoemaker. You may be creative as such. And, if so, you are a greater artist than the majority of the painters whose work is shown in the art galleries of today.”

“Atmosphere is the medium through which we see all things. In order, therefore, to see them in their true value on a photograph, as we do in Nature, atmosphere must be there. Atmosphere softens all lines; it graduates the transition from light to shade; it is essential to the reproduction of the sense of distance. That dimness of outline which is characteristic for distant objects is due to atmosphere. Now, what atmosphere is to Nature, tone is to a picture.”

“Photography as a fad is well-nigh on its last legs, thanks principally to the bicycle craze.”

“I know exactly what I have photographed [in his series 'Equivalents', 1925 - 1934]. I know I have done something that has never been done.. .I also know that there is more of the really abstract in some 'representation' than in most of the dead representations of the so-called abstract so fashionable now.”

“There is a reality — so subtle that it becomes more real than reality. That's what I'm trying to get down in photography.”

“I have always been a great believer in today. Most people live either in the past or in the future, so that they really never live at all. So many people are busy worrying about the future of art or society, they have no time to preserve what is. Utopia is in the moment. Not in some future time, some other place, but in the here and now, or else it is nowhere.”

“Man: [looking at a Stieglitz's photo of 'Equivalents'] Is this a photograph of water?Stieglitz: It happens to be a picture of the sky. But I cannot understand why that is of any importance.”

“AS A KID I WAS PROMISED an America - An America I believed in - and I insist on living - and dying - in that America, even I have to create it myself.”

“When I make a photograph, I make love.”

“I am an American. Photography is my passion. The search for truth my obsession”

“The goal of art was the vital expression of self.”