"I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles"
About this Quote
The Kyoto reference matters. Zen gardens are built to be contemplated in time, by a moving body, not “captured” in a single instant. They’re about shifting attention: raked gravel becomes water, stones become islands, meaning emerges through slow looking. A photograph from one point flattens that experience into a single, obedient rectangle. Even then, the rectangle won’t behave; perspective makes right angles buckle unless you’re dead-center and clinically aligned. The supposedly objective image ends up confessing its own bias.
This is classic Hockney: an artist who treats technology as culture, not just tools. His photo-collages and multi-perspective works argue that human vision is cumulative and wandering, closer to drawing than to a snapshot. The subtext is almost polemical: modern seeing has been trained by cameras to accept one-point perspective as reality. Hockney pushes back with a gentle empirical joke - try to photograph a rectangle and watch the world refuse to sit still.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Hockney, David. (2026, January 15). I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-made-a-photograph-of-a-garden-in-kyoto-the-zen-140785/
Chicago Style
Hockney, David. "I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-made-a-photograph-of-a-garden-in-kyoto-the-zen-140785/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"I made a photograph of a garden in Kyoto, the Zen garden, which is a rectangle. But a photograph taken from any one point will not show, well it shows a rectangle, but not with ninety degree angles." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/i-made-a-photograph-of-a-garden-in-kyoto-the-zen-140785/. Accessed 12 Feb. 2026.
