George Bernard Shaw
[Writer, critic, and dramatist, b. 1856, Dublin, d. 1950, Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England.]
The camera can represent flesh so superbly that, if I dared, I would never photograph a figure without asking that figure to take its clothes off.
I’ve posed nude for a photographer in the manner of Rodin’s Thinker, but I merely looked constipated.
The hand of the painter is incurably mechanical: his technique is incurably artificial... The camera... is so utterly unmechanical.
I would willingly exchange every single painting of Christ for one snapshot.
The photographer is like the cod, which lays a million eggs in order that one may be hatched.
As to the painters and their fanciers, I snort defiance at them; their day of daubs is over.
(1901)
If you cannot see at a glance that the old game is up, that the camera has hopelessly beaten the pencil and paint-brush as an instrument of artistic representation, then you will never make a true critic; you are only, like most critics, a picture-fancier.
(1901)
Photography is so truthful—its subjects are so obviously realities and not idle fancies—that dignity is imposed on it as effectually as it is on a church congregation.
(1901)
