Lewis Baltz
[Photographer, b. 1945, Newport Beach, California, d. 2014, Paris.]
Art schools, it seems to me, can be pretty great places. If you do nothing more than hang out a sign saying ‘Art School’ a lot of interesting, creative people will start coming through the door.
We grew up in a world of images. So the veneration once given to an image is gone.
I saw a world that was being shoved down my throat, and I thought by putting up a mirror to it I could show it to itself.
I hope that these photographs are sterile, that there’s no emotional content.
It was almost a taboo to photograph the ordinary daily existence around you, all the things that would eventually also become clichés of photography.
The received wisdom is that Atget photographed Paris as though it were a crime scene. (Did he really? Yes, I believe so.)
… photographs, taken individually, have very limited powers to define the world.
Coming from Orange County… I was trying to find a vocabulary to mediate my sense of unspeakable horror at being born when and where I was.
