Ray Metzker famous quotes

I never wanted to make portraits - to photograph celebrities, beautiful people, beautiful landscapes, beautiful buildings, or people in distressing situations.... I have always been interested in everyman - average, ordinary people in everyday situations.
-- Ray Metzker

#Beautiful #Average #People

Photographers are victims of paradox, tracking the impermanent to make it permanent.
-- Ray Metzker

#Photographer #Paradox #Victim

What appears in the pictures was the subject's decision, not mine. I took what they presented - delicate moments - unadorned and unglamorous, yet tender and exquisite.
-- Ray Metzker

#Decision #Moments #Delicate

I don't need exotic places to be stimulated. Out of familiarity comes nuance. The more you revisit a subject the more you're like to discover.
-- Ray Metzker

#Exotic Places #Needs #Nuance

The collection of photographs is a statement about the relationship of my camera and me.
-- Ray Metzker

#Cameras #Photograph #Collections

I am not an objective reporter. I prefer to go further, to the unstated things of our existence. What I can't understand and grasp seems to lead me.
-- Ray Metzker

#Existence #Leading Me #Reporters

A lot of my work is about is about events, but I also think a lot of my work is about fragmentation.... You have to break something down in order to have the parts synthesize.
-- Ray Metzker

#Thinking #Order #Events

Why one picture stands out among many others is always a mystery. In the beginning the subject is never quite known, but in the course of working something shows up on the film or in the print that speaks to me. I can never predict when this will happen. However, when it does there is an excitement - there is the ecstasy of recognition. And this is one of the things that keeps me going.
-- Ray Metzker

#Doe #Never Quit #Recognition

As I make my slow pilgrimage through the world, a certain sense of beautiful mystery seems to gather and grow.

How clear, how lovely bright, How beautiful to sight Those beams of morning play; How heaven laughs out with glee Where, like a bird set free, Up from the eastern sea Soars the delightful day. To-day I shall be strong, No more shall yield to wrong, Shall squander life no more; Days lost, I know not how, I shall retrieve them now; Now I shall keep the vow I never kept before. Ensanguining the skies How heavily it dies Into the west away; Past touch and sight and sound Not further to be found, How hopeless under ground Falls the remorseful day.

There is a beautiful and life-enhancing alternative outlook that offers insight, consolation, inspiration and meaning, which has nothing to do with religion, and everything to do with the best, most generous, most sympathetic understanding of human reality.

Don't frown beautiful, you fascinate me.

The most beautiful fate, the most wonderful good fortune that can happen to any human being, is to be paid for doing that which he passionately loves to do.

The average man. The emergence of the concept.

It is interesting to observe that in the year 1935 the average individual's incurious attitude towards the phenomenon of the State is precisely what his attitude was toward the phenomenon of the Church in the year, say, 1500. It does not appear to have occurred to the Church-citizen of that day, any more than it occurs to the State-citizen of the present, to ask what sort of institution it was that claimed his allegiance.

Facts are what pedantic, dull people have instead of opinions.

Money has no color. If you can build a better mousetrap, it won't matter whether you're black or white. People will buy it.

Find a need and fill it. Successful businesses are founded on the needs of people.