Dorothea Lange
On thinking “in twos”
“I am doing everything in doubles...One, two photographs, which spell one photograph, or which so feed each other that it's wonderful to grasp.”
“The twos are inseparable. In some cases, one of them is dominant to the other, so that the second is contributory. In some cases, they are perfectly balanced in importance: one amplifies the other. In some cases, they act completely together and make a loud noise. In each case, they are together because of the inner connection that I felt, not primarily that I made them at the same time.”
“If you would really be a consummate worker in photography, you’d work in threes, and maybe when you got better, you’d work in fours...to fortify....From idea you would go to statement, from statement you would move to...what in writing is a paragraph, and...eventually you might do a book. But that would be a book...the camera could do....It wouldn’t be just a collection of separate photographs bound together....I haven't gotten anywhere near it. But I can, I do, think in twos.”
- Dorothea Lange