André Kertész
[Photographer, b. 1894, Budapest, Hungary, d. 1985, New York.]
Technique is only the minimum in photography. It’s what one must start with. I believe you should be a perfect technician in order to express yourself as you wish and then you can forget about the technique.
Minor White
[Photographer, writer, and theorist, b. 1908, Minneapolis, Minnesota, d. 1976, Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
It is curious that I always want to group things, a series of sonnets, a series of photographs; whatever rationalizations appear, they originate in urges that are rarely satisfied with single images.
Boris Yaro
[Photographer, b. 1938, lives in Northridge, California.]
I hide behind my camera. Even though the event may be horrific, it’s still a journal of that particular day and all the things that happen with it.
Philip Jones Griffiths
[Photojournalist, b. 1936, Rhuddian, Wales, d. 2008, London.]
... faking has enjoyed a quantum leap with the advent of computerized manipulation. Now, with digital cameras, there is no “original” to compare... Fraudulent practice is easy and detection difficult, and photography will never be the same again.
Nadar (Gaspard-Félix Tournachon)
[Photographer, b. 1820, Paris, d. 1910, Paris.]
The theory of photography can be taught in an hour, preliminary technical notions in a day... What cannot be taught is the moral intelligence of the subject, or the instinctive tact that puts you in touch with the model, allowing you to size them up and to steer them toward their habits, their ideas, according to each person's character. This enables you to offer something more than the ordinary, accidental plastic reproduction that the humblest laboratory assistant could manage. It enables you to achieve the most familiar, the most positive resemblance: a speaking likeness. This is the psychological side of photography. I don’t think that is too ambitious a term.
Arnold Genthe
[Photographer, b. 1869, Berlin, Germany, d. 1942, New York.]
I was determined to show people a new kind of photography: there would be no stilted poses; as a matter of fact, no poses at all. I would try to take my sitters unawares, at a moment when they would not realize that the camera was ready. I would show them prints in which a uniform sharpness would be avoided and emphasis laid on portraying a person’s character instead of making a commonplace record of clothes and a photographic mask.
Alphonse de Lamartine
[Writer, poet, and politician, b. 1790, Mâcon, France, d. 1869, Paris.]
Photography is better than art. It is a solar phenomenon in which the artist collaborates with the sun.
Shirin Neshat
[Artist, photographer, and filmmaker, b. 1957, Qazvin, Iran, lives in New York.]
Poets use metaphors and symbolism to construct images. I construct my images in the same way, except that I am using a different form.
