Joan Didion
[Writer, b. 1934, Sacramento, California, lives in New York.]
…if we are to live ourselves there comes a point at which we must relinquish the dead, let them go, keep them dead. Let them become the photograph on the table.
Martin Parr
[Photographer, b. 1952, Epson, Surrey, England, lives in Bristol and London, England.]
When a mother takes pictures of her children on the beach, she doesn’t take herself for an artist; she does it for love, which is an excellent reason, from my point of view.
Secondo Pia
[Lawyer and amateur photographer, b. 1855, Asti, Italy, d. 1941, Milan.]
No human being could have painted this negative that lies hidden in the stains. ... If it was not painted, not made by human hands, then ...
(On his 1898 photograph which highlighted the alleged face in what is known as “the Shroud of Turin.”)
Carrie Mae Weems
[Artist, b. 1953, Portland, Oregon, lives in Syracuse, New York.]
A black idiom is simply one that comes out of the peculiar social, economic and cultural conditions that mold black people. If a photographer is sensitive and understands the idiosyncratic gestures and rituals of the culture and employs this understanding while shooting, then that person is working out of a black idiom or a black esthetic.
Walker Evans
[Photographer, b. 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1975, New Haven, Connecticut.]
Color is vulgar, beauty is unimportant, and nature is trivial.
John Divola
[Photographer, b. 1949, Los Angeles, lives in Los Angeles.]
To photograph is often compared to an act of redemption—to select from an infinite number of choices that which is to be remembered.
Weegee (Usher Fellig)
[Photographer, b. 1899, Zlothew near Lemberg, Austrian Galicia (now Zolochiv, Ukraine), d. 1968, New York.]
A picture is like a blintz... eat it while it’s hot.
Martha Rosler
[Artist, b. 1943, Brooklyn, New York, lives in New York.]
The exposé, the compassion and outrage, of documentary fueled by the dedication to reform has shaded over into combinations of exoticism, tourism, voyeurism, psychologism and metaphysics, trophy hunting—and careerism.
