Ben Shahn Quotes

• I believe that if it were left to artists to choose their own labels, most would choose none.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Humor

• An amateur is someone who supports himself with outside jobs which enable him to paint. A professional is someone whose wife works to enable him to paint.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Job

  Tags in Supports

• I felt very strongly the whole social impact of that depression, you know, and I felt very strongly about the efforts that this Resettlement Administration was trying to accomplish; resettling people, helping them, and so on.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Impact, Strongly

• 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.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Action

• 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.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Little, Confess

• I feel, having the choices I had, I felt I had more control over my own medium than I did over photography.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Choice, Feel

• I became interested in photography when I found my own sketching was inadequate.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Photography, Interested

• I did take my camera along, as I felt there wouldn’t be enough time to draw the things I wanted to do. I did some drawing and did a lot of photography but I was not part of Stryker’s outfit at all.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Along, Camera

• I still love to look at photographs but I couldn’t do it myself anymore.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Love

• I didn’t care where my works were published.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Care

• I was brought in, not in the photographic department at all, I was brought in on a thing called Special Skills. I was to do posters, pamphlets, murals, propaganda in general, you know.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Department

• 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.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Remember

• 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.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Job

  Tags in Time

• I was so impressed with the work we were doing and I was very involved ideologically in photography – that I arranged an exhibition at the College Art Association. The first exhibition I picked the photographs and so on and we had an exhibition in New York.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Work

  Tags in Impressed

• Of course I realize that photography is not the technical facility as much as it is the eye, and this decision that one makes for the moment at which you are going to snap, you know.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Photography, Course

• 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.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Little, Inability

• Now, my knowledge of photography was terribly limited.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Knowledge

  Tags in Photography

• It’s pretty hard to measure influence of written or visual material.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Influence

  Tags in Measure

• Now, when I came on to Washington to begin my job, I was so interested in photography at that time that I really would have preferred to work with Stryker than with my department, which was more artistic if you wish.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Begin

• In the South or in the mine country, wherever you point the camera there is a picture.

  Ben Shahn

  Topics in Country

Ben Shahn (28)

Birth:	12th September, 1898
Death:	14th March, 1969
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Painter, Photographer

About

Ben Shahn was 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. In 1906, the family immigrated to the United States where they rejoined Hessel, who had fled Siberia. They settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, New York, where two more siblings were born. Although Shahn attended New York University as a biology student in 1919, he went on to pursue art at City College in 1921 and then at the National Academy of Design. He also worked for these agencies as a graphic artist and painter.

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