Lillian Bassman
[Photographer and painter, b. 1917, Brooklyn, New York, d. 2012, New York.]

 [When I photograph] I project what I’m not. What I would like to be. 
 The women who intrigued me [as models] had the most beautiful necks and the most responsive hand movements. At one point, I found El Greco, and that elongated look became my way of seeing. 
 It was sexually a very different thing when [the models] worked with men. They felt a charge... I caught them when they were relaxed, natural, and I spent a lot of time talking to them about their husbands, their lovers, their babies. 
 I am completely tied up with softness, fragility, and the problems of a feminine world. 
 Long necks. The thrust of the head in a certain position. The way the fingers work, fabrics work. It’s all part of my painting background.