William Wordsworth
[Writer and poet, b. 1770, Cockermouth, Cumberland, England, d. 1850, Rydal Mount, England.]
Avaunt this vile abuse of pictured page!Must eyes be all-in-all, the tongue and ear
Nothing? Heaven keep us from a lower stage?
Ernst Haas
[Photographer, b. 1921, Vienna, Austria, d. 1986, New York City.]
In every artist there is poetry. In every human being there is the poetic element. We know, we feel, we believe… one cannot photograph art. One can only live it in the unity of his vision, as well as in the breadth of his humanity, vitality, and understanding. There is no formula—only man with his conscience speaking, writing, and singing in the new hieroglyphic language of light and time. Guillaume Apollinaire
[Poet and writer, b. 1880, Rome, d. 1918, Paris.]
Your smile appeals asmight a flower.
Photograph you are the brown mushroom
in the forest
of her beauty.
The white spaces are
moonlight
in a peaceful garden
full of fountains and frenzied gardeners.
Photograph you are the smoke of the flame
of her beauty.
There are in you,
photograph, strains
of langorous music.
In you I hear
long melodies.
Photograph you are the shadow
cast by the sun
of her beauty.
Frederick Sommer
[Photographer, b. 1905, Angri, Italy, d. 1999, Prescott, Arizona.]
Poetic and speculative photographs can result if one works carefully and accurately, yet letting chance relationships have full play. Wallace Stevens
[Poet, b. 1879, Reading, Pennsylvania, d. 1955, Hartford, Connecticut.]
Reality as a thing seen by the mind,Not that which is but that which is apprehended.
(Cited as applicable to photography by critic Geoff Dyer)
Harry Callahan
[Photographer, b. 1912, Detroit, Michigan, d. 1999, Atlanta, Georgia.]
If you choose your subject selectively—intuitively—the camera can write poetry. Clarence John Laughlin
[Photographer, b. 1905, Lake Charles, Louisiana, d. 1985, New Orleans, Louisiana.]
I have approached the buildings as psychological and poetic manifestations—rather than from the more technical viewpoints of the architect and historian (which mostly miss the living spirit behind the forms). Yukio Mishima
[Writer, b. 1925, Tokyo, d. 1970, Tokyo.]
... it is here, I would assert without hesitation, that the poetry of the photograph lies. The photographer has gazed clearly, with his own eyes, on unheard-of metamorphoses, and has testified to them.