John Paul Caponigro Quotes

The computer is a tool akin to a telescope or a microscope; a tool that opens vast frontiers of possibilities and brings them to light; a tool that captures the elemental and animates or holds it still at will; a tool that captures the organic flow of the earth's crust or the wash of a wave, and creates an impossible symmetry, an elemental Rorshach pattern ripe for continued exploration, divulging a thousand revelations.

The primary mode of experiencing images is non-verbal ... but once it's brought out into the light of the day, what's understood by the subconscious intuitive mind can be better grasped by the conscious rational mind. Aligning the two produces powerful results.

The frame frames a frame of mind.

The most important question is, 'Am I asking the most important question?' The second most important question is, 'Am I asking the most important question in the most important way?'

Listen carefully. The way(s) we speak about things is revealing.

It takes asking many questions from many perspectives to truly understand something.

My mantra is, 'This or something better.'

Color is a powerful physical, biological, and psychological force.

It's important that we regularly reconsider, revise, and expand our practices, as our capabilities and needs evolve, both to strengthen our understanding of them and to promote our awareness of new practices and their conscientious uses.

A good question has many answers.

Through the experience of art, the powers of perception and transformation can be awakened, in both those who create it and those who re-perceive it.

I'd say seeking is one of the fundamental artistic impulses. Art is about discovery. The medium is not the message.

Above all, remember that the computer simply isn't as intelligent as you are.

All photographs are about light. The great majority of photographs record light as a way of describing objects in space. A few photographs are less about objects and more about the space that contains them. Still fewer photographs are about light itself.

With the arrival of the new comes the need to overcome fascination with novelty in order to approach substance and sophistication - a sophistication born of subtlety and depth of perception, not complexity and perceived virtuosity.

Art is a journey of discovery.

It's one thing to make a beautiful thing; it's another thing to make a living thing.

Education, or enrichment, is a dynamic, evolving, lifelong process. Every time you look, sensitively with awareness, your vision grows.

Different people can photograph the same things with the same tools and create such different images.

Many oriental cultures make a distinction between two ways of looking - 'hard eyes' and 'soft eyes'. When we look with hard eyes, we see specific details with sharp focus, but we don't see the relationships between different details as well. When we look with soft eyes we see the relationships between everything in our field of vision, but with this softer focus, we don't see all the details as clearly. It's possible to look in two ways at once.

Images are altered in many ways, to many degrees, and for many reasons, so it's important for viewers to be informed of both.

Photography extends our perception allowing us to see and experience more - second hand.

We talk about the vulnerability involved in sharing our work publicly. I don't think we talk enough about the real vulnerability involved in making art; if we truly engage the process we are changed by it.

A photograph is an invitation to look - and to look at looking.

The act of creation, making anything, is an alteration. We cannot eliminate the medium or ourselves from the process, and both are limited. We create decisive moments by devoting our time and attention to specific things. This is the greatest gift we can give anyone or anything - pieces of our life.