Robert Smithson Eye Quotations

Let's face it, the human eye is clumsy, sloppy, and unintelligible when compared to the camera's eye.

Noon-day sunshine cinema-ized the site, turning the bridge and the river into an over-exposed picture. Photographing it with my Instamatic 400 was like photographing a photograph. The sun became a monstrous light-bulb that projected a detached series of stills through my Instamatic into my eye.

A camera is wild in just about anybody's hands, therefore one must set limits. But cameras have a life of their own. Cameras care nothing about cults or isms. They are indifferent mechanical eyes, ready to devour anything in sight. They are lenses of the unlimited reproduction.

The museum spreads its surfaces everywhere, and becomes an untitled collection of generalizations that mobilize the eye.