Alfred Stieglitz Quotes

Drawing makes you see things clearer, and clearer and clearer still, until your eyes ache.

I remember when I was in art classes, I hated following the assignments. And I would get in trouble for doing something totally different or taking it in a weird direction.

The thing is that when you don't carry a camera, that's when you see pictures in particular, or at least that's when you think you see pictures in particular. When you do carry it, if you do see one on the occasion that you do, you can take it.

My first love is art, and I see a lot of things in an artistic way.

I don't want ever to be guilty of what my critics claim: doing formula without original elements.

Learn to see things as they really are, not as we imagine they are.

Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.

Mainstream to me equals boring, so I don't want to be doing that.

Artists are, above all, men who want to become inhuman.

Sometimes my art is just an illusion - or is it?

The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing.

Originality is a thing we constantly clamour for, and constantly quarrel with.

For 'Picture This,' I wanted it to be a drawing book that didn't have any instructions about drawing, beyond the real simple stuff you'd find like in a Bazooka bubblegum wrapper, or in 'Highlights' magazine. I just wanted it to be feelings about looking and seeing and pictures.

If you have value as an artist it's probably going to be in your capacity to let things inside you get past things that are placed there to keep you from telling the truth. The more you see things as clearly and coldly as you can, the more value you're going to have.

Graphic design is the paradise of individuality, eccentricity, heresy, abnormality, hobbies and humors.

What you see is what you get.

One must always try to see the truth of a situation - it makes things universal.

Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it.

I always had that sense of being censored for the things that I thought. Why is it wrong to embroider your pants, or paint with acrylics on your clothing? Why is that weird? Isn't it weirder to want to be like everyone else?

If you define eccentricity as creativity, then yes, creativity is eccentricity.

The most ordinary word, when put into place, suddenly acquires brilliance. That is the brilliance with which your images must shine.

I passionately hate the idea of being with it; I think an artist has always to be out of step with his time.

Art is not predictable. Art is not golf, as great as that may be. There are 360 degrees of choice to make.

Both my fathers are unconventional. They are like unicorns or wizards. They are musicians through and through. The way they think is just different.

I know that whatever I put out, whether people think it's pop or noise or whatever, it's always going to be some kind of a freak or mutation. It's not going to be anything pure that a lot of people will relate to. And that's fine.