Ben Shahn
Ben Shahn
Ben Shahnwas a Lithuanian-born American artist. He is best known for his works of social realism, his left-wing political views, and his series of lectures published as The Shape of Content...
NationalityLithuanian
ProfessionArtist
Date of Birth12 September 1898
CountryLithuania
accept bit confess great guide inability knew logic missed refuse refused stunts technical
It's a little bit like my inability to read a guide book before I go anywhere. I can read it after I've been there and by the same logic I refuse to accept any technical stunts from anybody. I refused to learn more than I knew and I confess I missed a great deal.
angle helpful pictures quality
So, most of my pictures don't have any posed quality and this was a very helpful thing in the whole quality of my work, this angle finder.
felt people senator traveling trick
I remember traveling around in Arkansas with Senator Robinson, and I told him what this little trick was. He felt very much part of it and had me take pictures of people unbeknownst to them.
bit confess editing hole incredibly number punch quite roy ruined stopped
I confess that Roy was a little bit dictatorial in his editing and he ruined quite a number of my pictures, which he stopped doing later. He used to punch a hole through a negative. Some of them were incredibly valuable. He didn't understand at the time.
Whatever I get involved in, I'm totally involved, you see.
realized roy
Roy was just another bureaucrat to me, but I realized very soon that without Roy this thing would have died.
crowded people twelve
It used to be twelve people crowded around a sewing table; now it's ten.
love
I still love to look at photographs but I couldn't do it myself anymore.
I didn't care where my works were published.
mine south wherever
In the South or in the mine country, wherever you point the camera there is a picture.
angle avoid field genuinely horrible man returned
When a man returned from the field and we'd look at the work, we'd criticize each other very genuinely and never offensively. And we would avoid all tricks, angle shots were just horrible to us.
asia began interested monuments time took
Some time ago, we went to Asia and took a camera along, and I began to do what I'd done even years ago doing people. I couldn't get interested in it. And I did hundreds of photographs of details of the monuments as sculpture.
country job offered suggested worked
So, I was offered this job to come down there but first it was suggested that I take a trip around the country in the areas in which we worked to see what it's all about, and I tell you that was a revelation to me.
cover half harvest job payroll salary time
In '38, this time I did a job for Mr. Stryker. I went on his payroll at about half the salary I was getting before, to cover what he called Harvest in Ohio.