David Hockney Quotes

Photography sees surfaces, it doesn't see space. We see space but the camera doesn't.

The heart of the problem is not so much how we see objects in depth, as how we see the constant layout of the world around us. Space, as such, empty space, is not visible, but surfaces are.

I've no doubt that those photographs i took will make people look at everything in a more interesting way - the little tear on one piece of paper, the shadow on another. But good painting has always done that - made you see things. And the most ordinary can be the most extraordinary.

I use visual perception as a way of bringing people into my space.

For an object under the eye will appear very different from the same object placed above it; in an inclosed space, very different from the same in an open space.

What you lose in blindness is the space around you, the place where you are, and without that you might not exist. You could be nowhere at all.

The eye searches for shapes. It searches for a beginning, a middle, and an end.

I see through my eyes; the camera is just a machine to record it for me.

I don't take the camera out with me. My eyes are the camera for me every day.

You put your camera around your neck along with putting on your shoes, and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera.

Colour could give rise to sensations which would interfere with our conception of space.

The artist is always concerned with a total view of the world. However, when the photographer takes a picture ... the edge of his picture is just as interesting as the middle, one can only guess at the existence of a whole, and the view presented seems chosen by chance.

You get the most 3D effect when it starts about three to four seconds, that's when it starts feeling 3D. And then what you do, quick shots are always flat.

I like being behind the camera because I can control perception and what people see.

The camera is for us a tool, not a pretty mechanical toy ... people think far too much about techniques and not enough about seeing.

Photography, if there is photography, is already snapped, already shot, in the very interior of things and for all points of space.

To see is to think, and to think is to see.

When I look at things, I always see the space they occupy. I always want the space to reappear, to make a comeback, because it's lost space when there's something in it.

Seeing is a neglected enterprise.

The eye and brain are not like a fax machine, nor are there little people looking at the images coming in.

Speaking, when you have something to say, is like looking. But who looks? If people could see properly, and see whole, they would all be painters. And it's because people have no idea how to look that they hardly ever understand.

In my earlier paintings, I wanted the space between the picture plane and the spectator to be active. It was in that space, paradoxically, the painting 'took place.' Then, little by little, and to some extent deliberately, I made it go the other way, opening up an interior space... so that there was a layered, shallow depth.

3D is very exciting. I love it. I'm a complete convert. Everything for me, from now on, is 3D. I'm completely convinced it's the future of home entertainment, as well as cinema entertainment. I think it's a paradigm shift, in terms of cinema, and those things don't happen very often. The introduction of sound, the introduction of color photography and now 3D have been the big shifts. They happen once every 40 or 50 years, so it's very exciting to be a filmmaker, working while one of them is happening.

Ever since the invention of the camera, people have been trying to create 3D, because we see things in 3D, and everyone's aware that the camera doesn't.

If photography is to be likened to perception, this is not because the former is a natural process but because the latter is also coded.