Edward Weston
[Photographer, b. 1886, Highland Park, Illinois, d. 1958, Wildcat Hill, California.]

 The photograph isolates and perpetuates a moment of time: an important and revealing moment, or an unimportant and meaningless one, depending upon the photographer's understanding of his subject and mastery of his process. 
 My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera’s eye may entirely change my idea. 
 For photography is a way to capture the moment—not just any moment, but the important one, this one moment out of all time when your subject is revealed to the fullest—that moment of perfection which comes once and is not repeated. 
 To compose a subject well means no more than to see and present it in the strongest manner possible. 
 A photograph has no value unless it looks exactly like a photograph and nothing else. 
 Photography, not soft gutless painting, is best equipped to bore into the spirit of today. 
 By all means tell your Board that pubic hair has definitely been part of my development as an artist, tell them it has been the most important part, that I like it black, brown, red or golden, curly or straight, all sizes and shapes. (To Museum of Modern Art curator Beaumont Newhall, after being told the museum was reluctant to show nudes revealing pubic hair.) 
 To see the Thing itself is essential: the quintessence revealed direct without the fog of impressionism... This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be more than a rock. Significant presentation—not interpretation. 
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