Quotes About Interpretation

Unlike any other visual image, a photograph is not a rendering, an imitation or an interpretation of its subject, but actually a trace of it. No painting or drawing, however naturalist, belongs to its subject in the way that a photograph does.

All photographs are there to remind us of what we forget. In this — as in other ways — they are the opposite of paintings. Paintings record what the painter remembers. Because each one of us forgets different things, a photo more than a painting may change its meaning according to who is looking at it.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.

A photograph is not necessarily a lie, but it isn't the truth either. It's more like a fleeting, subjective impression.

Why? Because true translation is not a binary affair between two languages but a triangular affair. The third point of the triangle being what lay behind the words of the original text before it was written. True translation demands a return to the pre-verbal

A drawing of a tree shows not a tree but a tree being looked at

Having seen this reproduction, one can go to the National Gallery to look at the original and discover what the reproduction lacks. Alternatively one can forget about the quality of the reproduction and simply be reminded, when one sees the original, that it is a famous painting of which somewhere one has already seen a reproduction. But in either case the uniqueness of the original now lies in it being the original of a reproduction.

Today we see the art of the past as nobody saw it before. We actually perceive it in a different way.

Photographs do not translate from appearances. They quote from them.

Those who first invented and then named the constellations were storytellers. What it changed was the way people read the night sky.

We read and reread the words of the original text in order to penetrate through them, to reach, to touch the vision or experience which prompted them. We then gather up what we have found there and take this quivering almost wordless 'thing' and place it behind the language into which it needs to be translated. And now the principal task is to persuade the host language to take in and welcome the 'thing' which is waiting to be articulated.

the more imaginative the work, the more profoundly it allows us to share the artist's experience of the visible.

Every image embodies a way of seeing. Even a photograph. For photographs are not, as is often assumed, a mechanical record. Every time we look at a photograph, we are aware, however slightly, of the photographer selecting that sight from an infinity of other possible sights. This is true even in the most casual family snapshot. The photographer's way of seeing is reflected in his choice of subject.

Yet, although every image embodies a way of seeing, our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing.

Those who read or listen to our stories see everything as through a lens. This lens is the secret of narration, and it is ground anew in every story, ground between the temporal and the timeless. If we storytellers are Death's Secretaries, we are so because, in our brief mortal lives, we are grinders of these lenses.

Much of what happens to us in life is nameless because our vocabulary is too poor. Most stories get told out loud because the storyteller hopes that the feeling of the story can transform a nameless event into a familiar or intimate one.

The Photographer's way of seeing is reflected in his choice of subject. The painter's way of seeing is reconstituted by the marks he makes on canvas or paper. Yet, although every image embodies a way of seeing, our perception or appreciation of an image depends also upon our own way of seeing.

bakmak bir seçme edimidir.

In it's travels, it's meaning is diversified.

But in either case the uniqueness of the original now lies in it being the original of a reproduction. It is no longer what the image shows that strikes one as unique; its first meaning is no longer to be found in what it says, but what it is.

When we read a story, we inhabit it. The covers of the book are like a roof and four walls. What is to happen next will take place within the four walls of the story. And this is possible because the story's voice makes everything its own.

The relation between what we see and what we know is never settled. Each evening we see the sun set. We know that the earth is turning away from it. Yet the knowledge, the explanation, never quite fits the sight.

If every event which occurred could be given a name, there would be no need for stories.

What any true painting touches is an absence - an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss.