Cindy Sherman Quotes

If you judge everything by how photographically real it looks, then you're missing out on a lot of what art is about and what communication is. There are ambiguities in life, and that should be reflected in art, cinema, and storytelling, I think.

I guess the role of art is to make something that is ambiguous and complex.

Once they're on paper, they're gone. I like to do as much with the words, as far as image goes, so that it's really left open for a lot of things, even though I remember a specific impression of something I had at the time. I can't say a song is about this or that; in fact, I wouldn't even want to. I just prefer to have people live it anyway they want. Because it's theirs after that. There's nothing I can do about it anymore

Part of the reason I make things realistic is, I don’t really want to have to explain my work. What I wish to communicate is done so people can make their own interpretation, and if it’s different to my idea it doesn't matter.

What do artists do? Artists give people something they didn't know they were missing: a dance, a piece of music, a painting, a piece of sculpture. Catering to that need is the best business strategy.

No individual photo explains anything. That’s what makes photography such a wonderful and problematic medium.

Imagine if Beethoven had a tape recorder. Then you'd know exactly what he meant. Maybe he meant 'Da da da da' instead of 'Boom boom boom boom!' Who knows?

The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion.

The art of interpretation is not to play what is written.

What one person might see as violent, someone else may see as beautiful. Maybe even art.

Photographers tend to have the non-judgmental gene

When somebody asks me what a song or a line is about, I feel like I'm not done writing it yet.

Style is objective, akin to art, so it varies.

People who create art would be fools to assume they know exactly what people are going to think of it.

What shall I say about poetry? What shall I say about those clouds, or about the sky? Look; look at them; look at it! And nothing more. Don't you understand anything about poetry? Leave that to the critics and the professors. For neither you, nor I, nor any poet knows what poetry is.

When the woman is attractive, is it an interesting picture, or is it the woman? I had a lot of headaches with that, which was why it was interesting. I don't think I always got it straight.

I don't know why people expect art to make sense. They accept the fact that life doesn't make sense.

Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera.

Art... does not take kindly to facts, is helpless to grapple with theories, and is killed outright by a sermon.

I said the photograph isn't what was photographed, it's something else. It's about transformation. And that's what it is.

Look at the things around you, the immediate world around you. If you are alive, it will mean something to you, and if you care enough about photography, and if you know how to use it, you will want to photograph that meaningness. If you let other people's vision get between the world and your own, you will achieve that extremely common and worthless thing, a pictorial photograph.

In a way, artists are shamans, facilitators who take what's there, channel it through themselves, then put it out there for people to appreciate.

If an overgrown child draws something on a piece of paper, you can't ask the paper what the drawing is supposed to represent.

I don't really remember the day when I stood behind my camera with Henry Kissinger on the other side. I am sure he doesn't remember it either. But this photograph is here now to prove that no amount of kindness on my part could make this photograph mean exactly what he.. or even I.. wanted it to mean. It's a reminder of the wonder and terror that is a photograph.