Paul Cezanne
[Artist, b. 1839, Aix-en-Provence, France, d. 1906, Aix, France.]
Everything is about to disappear. You’ve got to hurry up if you still want to see things.
John Berger
[Writer and critic, b. 1926, London, d. 2017, Paris.]
The camera relieves us of the burden of memory. It surveys us like God, and it surveys for us. Yet no other god has been so cynical, for the camera records in order to forget.
Ralph Steiner
[Photographer, b. 1899, Cleveland, Ohio, d. 1986, Hanover, New Hampshire.]
I say to young photographers, “What in God’s name are you doing, taking a picture of a tree or a mountain? That’s crazy! What you should do is take a person by the hand and show him the tree or the mountain itself. Why show him a stupid picture? It’s flat and it’s tiny compared to the mountain. The mountain is magnificent and has power ...”
Sigmar Polke
[Painter and photographer, b. 1941, Oels, Silesia, Germany (Now Poland), d. 2010, Cologne, Germany.]
A negative is never finished.
Leonard Freed
[Photographer, b. 1929, Brooklyn, New York, d. 2006, Garrison, New York.]
Photography is like life. What does it all mean? I don’t know, but you get an impression, a feeling... An impression of walking through the street, walking through the park, walking through life. I’m very suspicious of people who say they know what it means.
Edward Steichen
[Photographer and curator, b. 1879, Luxembourg, Germany, d. 1973, West Redding, Connecticut.]
Once you really commence to see things, then you really commence to feel things.
Minor White
[Photographer, writer, and theorist, b. 1908, Minneapolis, Minnesota, d. 1976, Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
When the photograph is the mirror of the man, and the man is the mirror of the world, then the Spirit might take over.
Henry James
[Writer, b. 1843, New York, d. 1916, Rye, England.]
Every good story is of course both a picture and an idea, and the more they are interfused the better the problem is solved.
