"Photography can never grow up if it imitates some other medium. It has to walk alone; it has to be itself"
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Abbott’s line lands like a refusal to be anyone’s understudy. In the early 20th century, photography was still auditioning for legitimacy, often by dressing up as painting: soft-focus atmospherics, staged allegories, a polite blur meant to signal “art.” Abbott calls that bluff. “Grow up” isn’t a gentle metaphor; it’s a rebuke to a medium acting younger than it is, seeking approval from older, more “respectable” forms.
The phrasing matters. “Imitates” is the sin, not influence. She’s not arguing for purity as dogma; she’s demanding confidence. “Walk alone” gives photography a body and a gait: forward motion, risk, a willingness to be judged on its own terms. The repetition in “It has to” reads like discipline, the kind an artist imposes when the surrounding culture keeps offering easier routes to prestige.
Context sharpens the stakes. Abbott championed straight photography and documentary clarity, from her portraits in Paris to her decisive cataloging of New York’s changing cityscape. Her era was also the era of mass images, advertising, and propaganda; photography was powerful precisely because it looked like evidence. If it borrowed the manners of painting, it dulled its most radical feature: the camera’s capacity to describe the modern world with unsentimental precision, to make time, labor, architecture, and faces feel newly legible.
Underneath is a cultural critique: when a new medium chases old hierarchies, it reproduces their blind spots. Abbott wants photography to stop asking for permission and start making standards.
The phrasing matters. “Imitates” is the sin, not influence. She’s not arguing for purity as dogma; she’s demanding confidence. “Walk alone” gives photography a body and a gait: forward motion, risk, a willingness to be judged on its own terms. The repetition in “It has to” reads like discipline, the kind an artist imposes when the surrounding culture keeps offering easier routes to prestige.
Context sharpens the stakes. Abbott championed straight photography and documentary clarity, from her portraits in Paris to her decisive cataloging of New York’s changing cityscape. Her era was also the era of mass images, advertising, and propaganda; photography was powerful precisely because it looked like evidence. If it borrowed the manners of painting, it dulled its most radical feature: the camera’s capacity to describe the modern world with unsentimental precision, to make time, labor, architecture, and faces feel newly legible.
Underneath is a cultural critique: when a new medium chases old hierarchies, it reproduces their blind spots. Abbott wants photography to stop asking for permission and start making standards.
Quote Details
| Topic | Art |
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