Quote o' the Day

Hawthorne

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"Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness."

—Nathaniel Hawthorne                  -

Sources: quotation: Perceptual Quotes for Photographers by Richard D. Zakia, Light Impressions Corporation, 1980; portrait: Library of Congress, attrib. to John Adams Whipple, Whipple & Black, c. 1850–55.

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Original contents copyright 2010 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved.

Comments

[Paul]

A few minutes ago there were 7 used copies of this book for sale on Amazon. Now there are 6... :-)

(By the way, the last two were $140+, so there are only 4 cheap ones left)

[hugh crawford]

"To give a text an Author" and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it "is to impose a limit on that text."
— Roland Barthes

Mike are you tackling authorial intentionality on a Tuesday night when the last episode of Lost is on?

Does this mean that Nathaniel Hawthorne is a post-structuralist?

[Mike Johnston]

"Does this mean that Nathaniel Hawthorne is a post-structuralist?"

Either that or a pre-Derridian.

I just like decomposed Daguerreotypy.

Mike

[Dave]

Beautiful.

Thank you, Mike.

[Juan Rizzo]

Mike, you mean "deconstructed", right?
(Ok, enough with those witty comments for now, let us not provoke those fiery post-structuralists... ;)

[Tim]

Funky photo, and of course, a good point duly quoted.

Never mind "digital manipulation with PS for photo-journalism" and all the other crap, colleges should have courses in art *appreciation* - how to read a photo in order that you then go & do likewise.

[Robert Roaldi]

From Nilsson's The Point, "You see what you want to see, and you hear what you want to hear." (paraphrased)

[Michael]

A super find, Mike! Leaves us in a bind, though. Sometimes we want photographs to be documentary, a pure piece of evidence, so not merely 'suggestive'. Other times, though, we want them to suggest more than appears in that split second in that rectangle. Can we have both at once?

[Yuanchung Lee]

Funny coincidence and turn of technology -- I'm currently reading Hawthorne's "The House of the Seven Gables," which of course features a daguerreotypist as a main character, on my I-Pod Touch (downloaded free via I-Tunes as an "app", of course) ....

[Shelley McEuen]

Pretty liberal for a Puritan! This quote says so much about thinking for ourselves...an idea that tends to be forgotten these days. Thank you for sharing it.

[Markus Spring]

REFUND Amazon Order: Perceptual Quotes for Photographers by Zakia

Seems to have been the TOP effect.

[Mike Johnston]

"Seems to have been the TOP effect"

Markus,
Too bad, but it didn't take much of an "effect." The book has been out of print for a long time (I just stumbled on it in my local used bookstore the other day and remembered it from the school library where I taught c. 1986.)

There were only a few used copies on Amazon.

Have you tried Abebooks?

Mike

[Markus Spring]

Mike,
thanks for the hint to Abebooks. I just ordered a copy there.

Markus

[Markus Spring]

Oh oh, my joy was precepitate - Abebooks canceled my order. This *has* to be the TOP effect.

Markus