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
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.
crowded people twelve
It used to be twelve people crowded around a sewing table; now it's ten.
war mean people
When you talk about war on poverty it doesn't mean very much; but if you can show to some degree this sort of thing then you can show a great deal more of how people are living and a very great percentage of our people today.
people sake action
I was primarily interested in people, and people in action, so that I did nothing photographically in the sense of doing buildings for their own sake or a still life or anything like that.
abandon cameras gadgets people simpler sure
Now again, there are so many gadgets on cameras now that people abandon these simpler instruments for the more sure instruments.
best felt function newspaper people photograph possible seen ways
I felt the function of a photograph was to have it seen by as many people as possible and the newspaper is one of the best ways or the magazine.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.