Catherine Opie Quotes

Photography has been a passion of mine since I was 15. After my kids were born I found myself incorporating my photography into different art endeavors and from there it just blossomed.

The beauty of women was the first expression of my photography.

As I have practiced it, photography produces pleasure by simplicity. I see something special and show it to the camera. A picture is produced. The moment is held until someone sees it. Then it is theirs.

A picture must possess a real power to generate light and for a long time now I've been conscious of expressing myself through light or rather in light.

I have always found photography magical, and became more taken with it whilst modeling.

I love the way in which I make up dances. It's a complicated way and the product is usually clear. Clear and simple. I don't need everybody to know that there are all of these fabulous things going on. If you CAN see it, that's wonderful.

Through writing, one experiences something different to what one experiences with the five senses one has because language is a different metier.

I think that cinema is medium of communication. It's as valid as novels or fine art.

Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on its long white bones, of turning into song.

God gave us music, so we play with our words.

I write in words. I don't write in sounds or in shapes or in flavors.

Photography is only a new road from a different direction, but moving toward the common goal, which is life.

I admire writers who can make complicated things simple, but my own talent has been to make simple things complicated.

One reason I was interested in photography was to get away from the preciousness of the art object.

For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity.

Cinema is a medium that can translate ideas.

I didn't think I had anything particular to say, but I thought I might have something to say to children.

I love art and fashion.

You know, I think music is very interactive. It's a - it's a language.

The most powerful words in English are 'Tell me a story,' words that are intimately related to the complexity of history, the origins of language, the continuity of the species, the taproot of our humanity, our singularity, and art itself.

Artists need to express.

I think at any point, as an artist, whatever the medium - just having an audience means the world.

Remarks are not literature.

I love creating images, of course, because I'm an artist.

Of all those arts in which the wise excel, Nature's chief masterpiece is writing well.