"You don't make a photograph just with a camera. You bring to the act of photography all the pictures you have seen, the books you have read, the music you have heard, the people you have loved."
"The dismal half-baked images of the average "reportage" and "documentary" photography are self dammning... the slick manner, the slightly obscure significance, the esoteric fear of simple beauty for its own sake - I am deeply concerned with these manifestations of decay. Gene Smith's work validates my most vigorous convictions that if the documentary photographs is to be truly effective it must contain elements of art, intensity, fine craft and spirituality. All these his work contains and we may turn to his work with gratitude, appreciation and great respect."
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Source: A Personal Credo. Essay by Ansel Adams (1943), first published in American Annual of Photography, 1944; later published in Photographers on Photography edited by Nathan Lyons, 1966, and in Photography in Print: Writings from 1816 to the Present edited by Vicki Goldberg, 1988.
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