Alix Smith Quotes

What I want to give in the theatre is beauty, that's what I want to give.

The great movies and the great commercials always work on every single level.

...The more a picture has to give, the greater it is.

Is the Mona Lisa an 'accurate' representation of the actual human model for the painting? Who knows? Who cares? It's a great piece of art. It moves us. It makes us wonder, makes us gape - finally makes us look inward at ourselves.

I like to feel that all my best photographs had strong personal visions and that a photograph that doesn't have a personal vision or doesn't communicate emotion fails.

Things that bring out your emotions are what should be in theaters and in books. That's what art is. It makes you feel things.

I never tried to revolutionise photography; I just do what I do and keep my fingers crossed that people will like it.

I'm much more about the emotion that a photograph provokes out of you and less about how technically brilliant it is.

For me, I like to have explosive moments, whether it is a particular movement itself in the whole sequence. I like to have shocking moments; for audiences to feel, like, 'Whoa!' It's always been my forte.

There is only one valuable thing in art: the thing you cannot explain.

What does that represent? There was never any question in plastic art, in poetry, in music, of representing anything. It is a matter of making something beautiful, moving, or dramatic - this is by no means the same thing.

All good performance pieces have some philosophical validity. That's the difference between mere theater and performance art.

It's far better to shoot a good picture than a good-looking picture.

What makes art in general, and literature in particular, remarkable, what distinguishes them from life, is precisely that they abhor repetition. In everyday life, you can tell the same joke thrice and, thrice getting a laugh, become the life of the party. In art, though, this sort of conduct is called 'cliche.'

Film has its own innate poetry.

I am not indulgent. I think constructing a scene elaborately - with art, costume, and visual drama - is not indulgence. Other people should do it, too.

Photography isn't about seeing, it's about feeling. If I don't have some kind of feeling for what I'm shooting, how can I expect the person who looks at it to feel anything?

In the finished article, the only thing that is important is whether it moves you or not. There is nothing else that is important at all.

But there is more to a fine photograph than information. We are also seeking to present an image that arouses the curiosity of the viewer or that, best of all, provokes the viewer to think-to ask a question or simply to gaze in thoughtful wonder. We know that photographs inform people. We also know that photographs move people. The photograph that does both is the one we want to see and make. It is the kind of picture that makes you want to pick up your own camera again and go to work.

It's far easier to write why something is terrible than why it's good. If you're reviewing a film and you decide "This is a movie I don't like," basically you can take every element of the film and find the obvious flaw, or argue that it seems ridiculous, or like a parody of itself, or that it's not as good as something similar that was done in a previous film. What's hard to do is describe why you like something. Because ultimately, the reason things move people is very amorphous. You can be cerebral about things you hate, but most of the things you like tend to be very emotive.

As for a picture, if it isn't worth a thousand words, the hell with it.

The forehead of every work must shine from afar.

Expression alone can invest beauty with supreme and lasting command over the eye.

Yes, there's a certain power to a photograph. The camera has a way of disorienting a person, if it wants to and, for me, when it disorients, it's got real value.

The good photographer will produce a competent picture every time whatever his subject. But only when his subject makes and immediate and direct appeal to his own interests will he produce a work of distinction.