Roland Barthes
[Writer, critic, and theorist, b. 1915, Cherbourg, d. 1980, Paris.]
I suffer, motionless. Cruel, sterile deficiency: I cannot
transform my grief, I cannot let my gaze drift; no culture will help me utter this suffering which I experience entirely on the level of the image’s finitude (this is why I cannot
read a photograph: the Photograph—my Photograph—is without culture: when it is painful, nothing in it can transform grief into mourning.
Wright Morris
[Writer and photographer, b. 1910, Central City, Nebraska, d. 1998, Mill Valley, California.]
All, or most, photographs have many faces. The face desired is revealed by the caption.
Georges Didi-Huberman
[Writer and thinker, b. 1953, Saint-Etienne, France, lives in Paris.]
The image is not a closed field of knowledge; it is a whirling, centrifugal field. It is not a “field of knowledge” like any other; it is a movement demanding all the anthropological aspects of being and time.
Mary Ellen Mark
[Photographer, b. 1940, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, d. 2015, New York.]
I think you reveal yourself by what you choose to photograph, but I prefer photographs that tell more about the subject. There’s nothing much interesting to tell about me; what’s interesting is the person I’m photographing, and that’s what I try to show... . I think each photographer has a point of view and a way of looking at the world... that has to do with your subject matter and how you choose to present it. What’s interesting is letting people tell you about themselves in the picture.
Mario Giacomelli
[Photographer, b. 1925, Senigallia, Italy, d. 2000, Senigallia.]
Photography is not difficult—as long as you have something to say.
Robert Heinecken
[Photographer, b. 1931, Denver, d. 2006, Albuquerque, New Mexico.]
I am interested in the relationships and play between an unfamiliar picture/object context and the familiar photographic image.
Peter Brook
[Theater director and producer, b. 1925, London, lives in London.]
One view of photography is that it is a zen-like act which captures reality with its pants down—so that the vital click shows the anatomy bare. In this, the photographer is invisible but essential. A computer releasing the shutter would always miss the special moment that the human sensibility can register. For this work, the photographer’s instinct is his aid, his personality a hindrance.
Henry Wessel
[Photographer, b. 1942, Teaneck, New Jersey, lives in San Francisco.]
You’re suddenly seeing the coherence and the interconnectedness of everything, left to right, top to bottom, front to back. It’s all connected, and, somehow, it’s all in balance. And that’s, of course, when you go, “Yes!”
