"Better to be unknown than badly known”

Extract from the preface to Carlos Castaneda’s "The Teachings of Don Juan" by Octavio Paz.

A few years ago, Henri Michaux told me: "I started publishing small booklets of poetry. The run was about 200 copies. Then I climbed to 2,000 and now I have reached 20,000. Last week an editor proposed to publish my books in a collection that prints 100,000 copies. I refused: what I want is to return to the prior 200." It is difficult not to sympathize with Michaux: it is better to be unknown than badly known. A lot of light is like a lot of shadow: it does not let you see. In addition, the work must preserve its mystery. True, advertising does not dispel mysteries and Homer continues being Homer after thousands of years and thousands of editions. It does not dispel them but degrades them: it makes of Prometheus a circus spectacle, of Jesus Christ a star of the Music-hall, of Las Meninas an icon of obtuse devotions, and the books of Marx objects that are simultaneously sacred and illegible (in Communist countries nobody reads them and all swear in vain upon them). The degradation of advertising is one of the phases of the operation we call consumption. Transformed into candy, the works are literally swallowed, not liked, by hurried and distracted readers.

Octavio Paz, Cambridge, Massachusetts

September 15, 1973

Art and Entertainment

"A society that can't tell the difference between art and entertainment is not only ignorant but also spiritually poor. Art is meant to change the world, entertainment is meant to keep the world as it is."

Alex Klee

Photography that is not Authentic

"Nothing is more hateful to me than photography coated with gimmicks, poses, and false effects. Therefore, let me speak the truth in all honesty about our age and the people of our age.”

August Sander

Black and White Photography

"Black and white, on the other hand, immediately presents us with a new way of seeing. By taking away colour, the image becomes an artistic interpretation. Visual elements like tone, texture, form and shape are revealed anew, where before they were overpowered by colour."

Andrew S. Gibson

The Term “Street Photography”

"I hate the term, I think it’s a stupid term: 'street photography’. I don’t think it tells you anything about a photographer or his work.”

Garry Winogrand

About Art

"This is also the real secret of the arts: always be a beginner. Be very, very careful about this point."

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

Eight Miles High

Eight miles high, and when you touch down
you’ll find it that it’s stranger than known;
signs in the street, that say where you’re going
are somewhere, just being their own.

Nowhere is there warmth to be found
among those afraid of losing their ground;
rain, gray town, known for it's sound
in places small faces unbound.

Round the squares huddled in storms
some laughing, some just shapeless forms;
sidewalk scenes and black limousines
some living, some standing alone.

The Byrds, 1966