It has never been my object to record my dreams, just the determination to realize them.
I believe in the relation between photography and music; And thats my inspiration.
Of course, there will always be those who look only at technique, who ask 'how', while others of a more curious nature will ask 'why'. Personally, I have always preferred inspiration to information.
A camera alone does not make a picture. To make a picture you need a camera, a photographer and above all a subject. It is the subject that determines the interest of the photograph.
A certain amount of contempt for the material employed to express an idea is indispensable to the purest realization of this idea.
A creator needs only one enthusiast to justify him.
All critics should be assassinated.
All my life I have painted pictures so that certain people would drop dead when they looked at them, but I have not succeeded yet. The worst painting cant hurt you, but a bad driver can kill you, a bad judge can send you to the chair, a bad politician can ruin an entire country, That is why even a bad painting is sacred.
An effort impelled by desire must also have an automatic or subconscious energy to aid its realization.
The tricks of today are the truths of tomorrow.
An original is a creation motivated by desire.
An original is a creation motivated by desire. Any reproduction of an originals motivated be necessity. It is marvelous that we are the only species that creates gratuitous forms. To create is divine, to reproduce is human.
If the affairs of the world were put in the hands of the screwball artists, it couldn’t be in a worse state than it is now !
If I'd had the nerve, I'd have become a thief or a gangster, but since I didn't, I became a photographer.
I would photograph an idea rather than an object, a dream rather than an idea.
I photograph the things that I do not wish to paint, the things which already have an existence.
I paint when I cannot photograph.
I paint what cannot be photographed, that which comes from the imagination or from dreams, or from an unconscious drive.
I paint what cannot be photographed, something from the imagination... I photograph the things I don't want to paint, things that are already in existence.
I never knew what I was doing until I was done.
I have never painted a recent picture.
I have been accused of being a joker. But the most successful art to me involves humor.
I do not photograph nature. I photograph my visions.
I am not going to be dictated to by the size of the camera. I use everything from an 8 x 10 to a 35-mm. But I don't use these modern cameras which break down all the time !
I am an economic person; I judge the amount of work involved with the amount of worth attained.
Dada cannot live in New York. All New York is dada, and will not tolerate a rival.
Cut out the eye from a photograph of one who has been loved but is seen no more. Attach the eye to the pendulum of a metronome and regulate the weight to suit the tempo desired. Keep going to the limit of endurance. With a hammer well-aimed, try to destroy the whole at a single blow.
Each one of us, in his timidity, has a limit beyond which he is outraged. It is inevitable that he who by concentrated application has extended this limit for himself, should arouse the resentment of those who have accepted conventions which, since accepted by all, require no initiative of application. And this resentment generally takes the form of meaningless laughter or of criticism, if not persecution.
I like contradictions. We have never attained the infinite variety and contradictions that exist in nature. Tomorrow I shall contradict myself. That is the one way I have of asserting my liberty, the real liberty one does not find as a member of society.
