As Warhol got more and more excited by my pictures, I did something that's a no no - I took out my Nikon and started shooting hand-held time exposures. Wharhol didn't like it one bit, and complained. I said, 'I can't help it, Andy. God construted me this way, to take pictures.' I was really flattered that he collected my prints – until I found out later that he collected 'everything'.
- Phil Stern, Great Images of the 20th Century : The Photographs That Define Our Times by Kelly Knauer (Editor), Inc Time
, ISBN: 1883013755 , Page: 143
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If you’re lucky enough to have captured maybe two hundred memorable pictures, you still haven’t captured that much experience, have you?
- Phil Stern
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I’ve taken mountains and mountains of stuff, which I occasionally describe as mountains and mountains of shit. It so happens, there’s a little gem here and a little gem there. You dig out those gems.
- Phil Stern
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You point a camera, and you push the button. The only trouble is that your life is at stake, and I came close to being killed quite a few times. But it turns out that everything seems to work in my favor. God apparently is very generous to atheists. He fucks the believers. That’s my observation.
- Phil Stern -
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There is no such thing as the perfect picture. That’s the challenge of photography. I was always striving for perfection, even though I knew I could never achieve it. But it kept me reaching for something...
- Phil Stern
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I’m always looking for perfection. Every photographer, in one way or another, if he’s serious, is. He ain’t ever going to get it. But hope springs eternal.
- Phil Stern
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What is a photographer? Some dumb-fucking, uneducated, illiterate schmuck.
- Phil Stern
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Look, Matisse I ain’t. You know how they have on the invitations, "a reception for the artist will be held at..." And I say, "Look, you gotta change this. I’m not an artist. I’m a photographer, a skilled craftsman."
- Phil Stern
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