Robert Rauschenberg Quotes

As an artist, the most important thing and the most special thing is when your intention shines through on the work.

My intention is to make interesting photographs. That's it, in the end. I don't make it up. Let's say it's a world I never made. That's what was there to deal with.

The good photograph is not the object, the consequences of the photograph are the objects. So that no one would say, how did you do it, where did you find it, but they would say that such things could be.

I start with no preconceived idea - discovery excites me to focus - then rediscovery through the lens - final form of presentation seen on ground glass, the finished print previsioned completely in every detail of texture, movement, proportion, before exposure - the shutter's release automatically and finally fixes my conception, allowing no after manipulation - the ultimate end, the print, is but a duplication of all that I saw and felt through my camera.

It is my intention to present - through the medium of photography - intuitive observations of the natural world which may have meaning to the spectators.

Sometimes I think that there's a fine line between impressionistic and messy.

Your camera is the best critic there is. Critics never see as much as the camera does. It is more perceptive than the human eye.

I will say that a lot of art, some of the best art, has very powerful and meaningful messages behind it, and the more you read the stuff on the walls, the more you learn the artist's intention, and you have a totally new point of view of what it's about.

As an artist, when you make something, you want the world to see it in its totality, especially when the intention is not to titillate.

Braque always said that the only thing that counts, in painting, is the intention, and it's true. What counts is what one wants to do, and not what one does. That's what's important.

Beauty can be seen in all things, seeing and composing the beauty is what separates the snapshot from the photograph.

A good print is really essential. I want to take strong documentary photographs that are as good technically as any of the best technical photographs, and as creative as any of the best fine-art photographs. [...] I don't want to just be a photo essayist; I'm more interested in single images...ones that I feel are good enough to stand on their own.

I have never taken a photograph without one thought in my head to amuse myself.

You see what you think, you see what you feel, you are what you see If with the camera you can make others see it - that is photography.

The aim of the painting is that the eye should find out what it likes.

I just walk around, observing the subject from various angles until the picture elements arrange themselves into a composition that pleases my eye.

The artist does not draw what he sees, but what he has to make others see.

I never knew [Alfred Stieglitz] to make a trip anywhere to photograph. His eye was in him, and he used it on anything that was nearby. Maybe that way he was always photographing himself.

And that desire-the strong desire to take pictures-is important. It borders on a need, based on a habit: the habit of seeing. Whether working or not, photographers are looking, seeing, and thinking about what they see, a habit that is both a pleasure and a problem, for we seldom capture in a single photograph the full expression of what we see and feel. It is the hope that we might express ourselves fully-and the evidence that other photographers have done so-that keep us taking pictures.

I do believe strongly in photography and hope by following it intuitively that when the photographs are looked at they will touch the spirit in people.

I'm actually not so sure what I'm hoping to find making photographs. You always want to come back with an image that's interesting visually, and you hope to get something from the person you photograph that's different than other images you know of these people. I don't know how I go about it. I also don't know how exactly what I set out to get other than these two things.

The writer's intention hasn't anything to do with what he achieves. The intent to earn money or the intent to be famous or the intent to be great doesn't matter in the end. Just what comes out.

The act of making a photograph is less a question of what is being looked at than how.

Work harder, get closer and be passionate about what you photograph.

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.