image distortion Quotes

I'm not satirical in a traditional way. What I do is more about creating caricatures and cartoons. I am commentating on the nature of how we live through photography, and how you can twist an angle to create a different perception of a person.

Every video I'm in, every magazine cover, they stretch you; they make you perfect. It's not real life.

When I had my first camera - I was a child of the '80s. I remember what it was like reusing the same tapes over and over again, and having really bad quality and images kind of bubbling up from under the surface.

Distortions control my self-image, like they do for a lot of us. It's irrational.

Photography today appears to be in a state of flight... The familiar is made strange, the unfamiliar grotesque. The amateur forces his Sundays into a series of unnatural poses.

A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing happened. The picture may distort; but there is always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what’s in the picture

Often, when you see yourself on the screen, you feel like a sweater that's been put through the washing machine. You have the impression of having done something full and luminous, and suddenly, when you see it on the screen, it's turned back into a tiny little thing.

I think my image gets distorted in the public's mind. They don't get a clear or full picture of what I'm like, despite the press coverage I mentioned early. Mistruths are printed as fact, in some cases, and frequently only half of a story will be told. The part that doesn't get printed is often the part that would make the printed part less sensational by shedding light on the facts.

All these old images of me floating across the screen, the terrible chasm of what you were and what you are. I know who I am, but these people who see me as I was then don't.

Photographs attract false beliefs the way flypaper attracts flies.

I'm a prankster with a Monty Python sense of humor that somehow gets misrepresented in those tacky supermarket publications as bratty, snotty, and rude.

I don't trust photographers. I'm now a relaxed, contented 60 year-old, but look at my pictures and you see a crazy, bug-eyed serial killer.

When it comes to size, most people don't want to see themselves looking bigger than what they are.

I got a job in the tear-sheets department, ripping up magazines like People, Fortune, Sports Illustrated, and Time, and delivering the editorial pages.... So I began to use a camera to make fake photographs of the ads. By re-photographing a magazine page and then developing the film in a cheap lab, the photos came out very strange.

All you need is a bad angle and suddenly you're 30 pounds overweight.

If you met Faith Hill in person, you would think she's absolutely beautiful. And when you take her picture, you will see every flaw that you never saw in person. Those flaws not only become visible but magnified.

If a medium is representational by nature of the realistic image formed by a lens, I see no reason why we should stand on our heads to distort that function. On the contrary, we should take hold of that very quality, make use of it, and explore it to the fullest.

I always assume I look better than I actually do. I'll feel pretty good about myself when I leave the house, then I'll see a picture and think, 'Crap, I had no idea that's what I was looking like.'

Actually, the curious thing is that the more you become a subject of admiration or loathing, the more you're examined under a microscope, the distance seems to open up between who you really are and the portrayals that people impose on you.

I am very suspicious of cameras and dramatic interpretations and the whole Hollywood myth-making process. I don't trust it. I've seen it affect people in bad ways.

Historically, you've had really muddy, unforgiving, unintentional images of black people.

The image we have of a famous person often bears no relation to them.

What have we done to our images? What have we done to our embarrassed landscapes? I have said this before and will repeat it again as long as I am able to talk: if we do not develop adequate images we will die out like dinosaurs.

Most of the pictures we consume are propaganda.

Because of the way I am built I photograph taller than I actually am; it's an optical illusion. The way you're naturally built is not something you can fake - you either photograph taller or you don't.