Frederick Sommer
[Photographer, b. 1905, Angri, Italy, d. 1999, Prescott, Arizona.]
Life itself is not the reality. We are the ones who put life into stones and pebbles.
Art and accident are one. Art accepts what it finds.
Art is the splendor of reality before everything has become meaning.
My [photographs] are not pure: they are a seething wealth of imperfection.
Words represent images: nothing can be said for which there is no image.
Poetic and speculative photographs can result if one works carefully and accurately, yet letting chance relationships have full play.
There is nothing to see, nothing featured; what’s the matter with you?
(Sommer’s summary of how others view his landscape photographs)
[Ansel Adams] elects to ennoble this thing. And so this thing gets stuck with this ennoblement, no? And this ennoblement will be forever and ever a stiffness and bareness because finally it’s only hygiene.
