Chuck Close
[Artist, b. 1940, Monroe, Washington, lives in New York.]

 The thing that interests me about photography, and why it’s different from all other media, is that it’s the only medium in which there is even the possibility of an accidental masterpiece. 
 I’ve always thought that problem solving is highly overrated and that problem creation is far more interesting. 
 From my point of view, photography never got any better than it was in 1840. 
 I always say that inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work. 
 No one makes a nude if they’re not going to get turned on, and if they claim that they are making it for other reasons it’s an absolute lie. 
 It always amazes me that just when I think there’s nothing left to do in photography and that all permutations and possibilities have been exhausted, someone comes along and puts the medium to new use, and makes it his or her own, yanks it out of this kind of amateur status, and makes it as profound and as moving and as formally interesting as any other medium. 
 It’s like a magic well. You think you know everything about [a] photograph, you think you've gotten everything out of it, and all of a sudden I see things in it I’d never seen before. 
 I have always attempted to create images that deliver the maximum amount of information about the subject. 
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