- Artist | September 12, 1898 - March 14, 1969
I became interested in photography when I found my own sketching was inadequate.
Ben Shahn
PhotographyMy OwnOwnSketching
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.
YouKnowSkillsSpecialPropaganda
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.
TimePeopleDetailsDoingCamera
I didn't care where my works were published.
CareWherePublishedWereWorks
It used to be twelve people crowded around a sewing table; now it's ten.
PeopleTableNowSewingUsedTen
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.
WifeSomeoneProfessionalOutside
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.
TodayGreatWarPeoplePovertyYou
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.
WorkManLookNeverUsHorrible
Whatever I get involved in, I'm totally involved, you see.
YouSeeWhateverInvolvedGet
The time when I had desire to go to the United States I didn't have a penny. It was in the middle of the depression, you know. I couldn't get as far as Hoboken at that time.
TimeDepressionPennyYouGoKnow
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.
JobMeYouDownCountrySee
Roy was just another bureaucrat to me, but I realized very soon that without Roy this thing would have died.
MeWithoutJustWouldSoonVery
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