Nourishment

Do you know the taste
of a photograph that depletes you?
Taste the taste of the photographs
before you serve them to your friends.

When you encounter an image that
angers and is rejected out of hand,
and especially if you cannot forget that thorn,
what is being nourished?

Those images that haunt
for days and weeks,
though the first impression
may have been
almost out of sight . . .
what is being nourished?

Maybe something in you that is starved
by your inhibitions and perversions
has had a tiny bit of food
and is crying out for more.

Feed that place, or stirring,
as often as you can,
for it’s probably your soul.
Open up,
take a chance that it is.

-- Minor White, Cleveland Workshop 1964

Selectivity

The difference between the casual impression
and the intensified image is about as great as that
separating the average business letter from a poem.

If you choose your subject selectively — intuitively —
the camera can write poetry.

— Harry Callahan, 1964

The chief requirement is to be fully involved

In my view photography has not changed since its origins, except in technical aspects, and these are not my major preoccupations. Photography is an instantaneous operation, both sensory and intellectual — an expression of the world in visual terms, and also a perpetual quest and interrogation. It is at one and the same time the recognition of a fact in a fraction of a second and the rigorous arrangement of the forms visually perceived which give to the fact expression and significance.

— Henri Cartier-Bresson, February 22, 1968