And Be Kind to Small Animals

I always say to young photographers, you’re screwed. They don’t like it, but there it is. If you really must insist on becoming a photographer like myself you need to carve a niche. Incubate your otherness. Detach yourself, and shoot like no-ones watching. Because they won’t be, not at your pictures. And iron your gingham shirts. And get a good agent. And be kind to small animals.

-- Martin Nactwey

The Future of Photography

A writer knows how to write and a composer knows theory of music so that they can extend their arts beyond purely technical elements. But in the future the technique of photography will be so simplified and so widely taught and understood that the illiterate per son will be the one who is not a photographer.

-- László Moholy-Nagy, The Future of Photography, 1944

Troublemakers

"It is no surprise that talented photographers are 99% pain in the ass to work with. They have strong opinions, are stubborn, reckless, and most of the time have an extremely bad character. But that is simply because they are constantly challenged by a reality that annoys them. Like being assaulted by mosquitoes, all the time. They don’t have an attitude problem, it’s the world that lacks one.

This is the exact reason why we love their work. They disturbed the reality in which they are put in, they challenge it, always demanding more, to see what is behind. They do not want to photograph the yellow brick road, although that might be pretty, they want to photograph the wizard behind the curtains."

--Paul Melcher

Every Time I Reread Tales of the Jazz Age, This Quote Makes Me Smile:

"What floor, please?" said the elevator man.

"Any floor," said Mr. In.

"Top floor," said Mr. Out.

"This is the top floor," said the elevator man.

"Have another floor put on," said Mr. Out.

"Higher," said Mr. In.

"Heaven," said Mr. Out.

--May Day, F. Scott Fitzgerald

Form and Function in Architecture

"I am in favor of an almost unlimited plastic freedom, a freedom that is not slavishly subordinate to the reasons of any given technique or of functionalism, but which makes an appeal to the imagination, to things that are new and beautiful, capable of arousing surprise and emotion by their very newness and creativeness; a freedom that provides scope -- when desirable -- for moods of ecstasy, reverie, and poetry."

--"Form and Function in Architecture," Oscar Niemeyer

Journalists

"Every journalist who is not too stupid or full of himself to notice what is going on knows that was he does is morally indefensible. He is a kind of confidence man, preying on people's vanity, ignorance, or loneliness, gaining their trust and betraying them without remorse."

--Janet Malcolm, The Journalist and the Murderer

Settlers

"There are roughly three New Yorks. There is, first, the New York of the man or woman who was born here, who takes the city for granted and accepts its size and its turbulence as natural and inevitable. Second, there is the New York of the commuter — the city that is devoured by locusts each day and spat out each night. Third, there is the New York of the person who was born somewhere else and came to New York in quest of something. [...] Commuters give the city its tidal restlessness; natives give it solidity and continuity; but the settlers give it passion."

--E.B. White, Here is New York

On Writing

"Literature was born not the day when a boy crying 'wolf, wolf' came running out of the Neanderthal valley with a big gray wolf at his heels: literature was born on the day when a boy came crying 'wolf, wolf' and there was no wolf behind him. That the poor little fellow because he lied too often was finally eaten up by a real beast is quite incidental. But here is what is important: between the wolf in the tall grass and the wolf in the tall story there is a shimmering go-between. That go-between, that prism, is the art of literature."

--Vladimir Nabokov

On Wordcounts

"There are only two kinds of stories in the world: those about which I do not care to write as many as 600 words, and those about which I would like to write many more than 600 words. But there is nothing about which I would like to write exactly 600 words."

-- David Halberstam (1934-2007)

Eames On Design

"Here is one of the few effective keys to the design problem -- the ability of the designer to recognize as many of the constraints as possible -- his willingness and enthusiasm for working within these constraints. Constraints of price, of size, of strength, of balance, of surface, of time and so forth."

-- Charles Eames

Still Relevant, I Think

From Harry Kalven, Jr.'s 1969 commencement address at Brown:

"There is much to admire in the students’ anger at the weaknesses of society, there is much to deplore in their excessive self-righteousness and moral simplicities; there is much to applaud in their energy and desire to get reforms moving, there is much to regret in their blind distrust of existing institutions, their wild impatience and their indifference to social costs. They seem like angry children; we seem like angry parents. They have presented us with what is certainly at once the most exhilarating, challenging, promising, infuriating, expensive, frightening phenomenon of our time."

Best Turndown Yet:

Me: [Elaborate request to take a stranger's photo, etc. etc. etc.]
J-School Student: Woman, I'm not a stranger, I'm in the book!
J-School Student's Friend: Uh, but you're a stranger to her.
J-School Student: But I'm in the book!
J-School Student's Friend: Listen, you really need to stop talking about Facebook so much. Nobody cares!

On Pizza Delivery & Immigration

"Well, OK, we are losers by definition, because delivering pizzas is a job for losers. But we're not all dumb assholes. In fact, even with the Faulkner and Dickens, I was probably the dumbest out of all the guys at work, or at least the worst educated. We got African doctors, Albanian lawyers, Iraqi chemists . . . I was the only one who didn't have a college degree. (I don't understand how there isn't more pizza-related violence in our society. Just imagine: You're, like, the top whatever in Zimbabwe, brain surgeon or whatever, and then you have to come to England because the fascist regime wants to nail your ass to a tree, and you end up being patronized at three in the morning by some stoned teenaged motherfucker with the munchies . . . I mean, shouldn't you be legally entitled to break his fucking jaw?)

--A Long Way Down, Nick Hornby

Overheard in Class

"So I recently learned that "hooking up" has taken on a whole new meaning since my day, and, well, I was crestfallen! Because I'm always about 15 years behind everything. But basically, he felt her up. I think that phrase is universal, no?"

- My beloved James Joyce professor

In Keeping With This Blog's Theme

Conductor: This is an express, uptown C train. You heard right: an express C train. Next stop: 125th Street. If you need local service on the Upper West Side, please transfer across the platform to the D, as in "Daddy done did it" or B, as in "bad boy Bobby Brown" train.

--C train, 59th St

More unusual subway announcements, courtesy of Overheard in NYC. How come my conductors are never this amusing?

Overheard at the Oscars

"I do have some sad news... Björk could not be with us tonight. She was trying on her dress and Dick Cheney shot her."