Rineke Dijkstra
[Photographer, b. 1959, Sittard, The Netherlands, lives in Amsterdam.]
For me it is essential to understand that everyone is alone. Not in the sense of loneliness, but rather in the sense that no one can completely understand someone else. I know very well what Diane Arbus means when she says that one cannot crawl into someone else’s skin, but there is always an urge to do so anyway. I want to awaken definite sympathies for the person I have photographed.
William Wegman
[Artist, b. 1943, Holyoke, Massachusetts, lives in New York.]
I get so confused about life photography art.
Robert Doisneau
[Photographer, b. 1912, Gentilly, Val-de-Marne, France, d. 1994, Montrouge, France.]
The photographer must be absorbent—like a blotter, allow himself to be permeated by the poetic moment... His technique should be like an animal function... he should act automatically.
Eve Arnold
[Photographer, b. 1913, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, d. 2011, London.]
What drove me and kept me going over the decades? If I had to use a single word, it would be “curiosity.”
Saul Leiter
[Photographer, b. 1923, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, d. 2013, New York.]
I don’t have a philosophy. I have a camera.
Daido Moriyama
[Photographer, b. 1938, Ikeda-cho, Osaka, Japan, lives in Tokyo.]
Until a few years ago, I was able to stave off an awareness that there is not an ounce of beauty in the world, and that humanity is a thing of extreme hideousness. So I could shoot and believe in something.
(1972)
William Eggleston
[Photographer, b. 1939, Memphis, Tennessee, lives in Memphis.]
We have a few things in common—smoking, drinking, and women. Photography just gets us out of the house.
(To photographer Juergen Teller)
John Berger
[Writer and critic, b. 1926, London, d. 2017, Paris.]
A photograph is static because it has stopped time. A painting or drawing is static because it encompasses time.
