Bernd Becher famous quotes

Our camera does not produce pretty pictures, but exact duplications that, through our renunciation of photographic effects, turn out to be relatively objective. The photo can optically replace its object to a certain degree. This takes on special meaning if the object cannot be preserved.
-- Bernd Becher

#Special #Cameras #Degrees

All we did was to turn back the time to a photography of precision which is superior to the human eye.
-- Bernd Becher

#Photography #Eye #Precision

This is about objects, not motifs. The photo is only a substitute for an object; it is unsuitable as a picture in its customary sense.
-- Bernd Becher

#Substitutes #Motifs #Objects

When someone discovers something in their lives that really interests them, then they should be content with doing that - without having to go and lie on a beach once a year.
-- Bernd Becher

#Beach #Lying #Years

We don't agree with the depiction of buildings in the '20s and 1930s. Things were seen either from above or below which tended to monumentalize the object. This was exploited in terms of a socialistic view - a fresh view of the world, a new man, a new beginning.
-- Bernd Becher

#New Beginnings #Men #Views

The question if this is a work of art or not is not very interesting for us. Probably it is situated in between the established categories. Anyway the audience which is interested in art would be the most open-minded and willing to think about it.
-- Bernd Becher

#Art #Thinking #Interesting

We simply thought that we would be considerably poorer in Europe if we didn't have the sacred buildings of earlier epochs. It's still possible to experience the Gothic period, not to mention the Romantic. Only nothing remains of the industrial age. So we thought that our photos would give the viewer the chance to go back to a time that is gone forever.
-- Bernd Becher

#Europe #Giving #Forever

As time went by we developed a sort of ideology without ever formulating it as such. I've always said that we are documenting the sacred buildings of Calvinism. Calvinism rejects all forms of art and therefore never developed its own architecture. The buildings we photograph originate directly from this purely economical thinking.
-- Bernd Becher

#Art #Thinking #Sacred

Sawyer was always the Vincent boy worth fighting for. He's the special one.

My life has been a bit special, this is true. I participated in the liberation of my country. I was one of the organisers of its struggle for liberation. I likewise actively participated in all the struggles for liberation.

We keep a special place in our hearts for people who refuse to be impressed by us.

The camera is interested in what you are thinking as opposed to just what you are doing or saying.

I started in a research lab for TV cameras, then I worked at a tape duplication facility. That was the first introduction for me to recorded music and hi-fi.

I really love sort of classical cinema where people were telling stories with very little dialogue, and people were using the camera in a really interesting way.

Love for God is the farthest reach of all stations, the sun of the highest degrees, and there is no station after that of love, except its fruit and its consequences.

Fear is good. In the right degree it prevents us from making fools of ourselves. But in the wrong measure it prevents us from fully living. Fear is our boon companion but never our master.

I fear -as far as I can tell- that most undergraduate degrees in computer science these days are basically Java vocational training. I've heard complaints from even mighty Stanford University with its illustrious faculty that basically the undergraduate computer science program is little more than Java certification.

Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence.