Andreas Gursky
[Photographer, b. 1955, Leipzig, Germany, lives in Dusseldorf.]
In retrospect I can see that my desire to create abstractions has become more and more radical. Art should not be delivering a report on reality, but should be looking at what’s behind something.
Lewis Baltz
[Photographer, b. 1945, Newport Beach, California, d. 2014, Paris.]
I hope that these photographs are sterile, that there’s no emotional content.
Peter Schjeldahl
[Writer and critic, b. 1942, Fargo, North Dakota, lives in New York.]
A word is a thought, of course. But any image, including a photograph, may become an instrument of sufficiently lucid cogitation.
Jeanloup Sieff
[Photographer, b. 1930, Paris, d. 2001, Paris.]
I’m proud of the two adjectives superficial and frivolous.
Harry Callahan
[Photographer, b. 1912, Detroit, Michigan, d. 1999, Atlanta, Georgia.]
I thought at one time I should benefit humanity, but I don’t even know what that means anymore, and then you think, well, you’re doing it to satisfy yourself, but there’s more to yourself than just satisfying yourself too, and so I really think that it’s just that I want to leave something for somebody.
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
[Poet, b. 1806, Coxhoe Hall, Durham, England, d. 1861, Florence, Italy.]
I long to have such a memorial of every being dear to me in the world. It is not merely the likeness which is precious in such cases—but the association and the sense of nearness involved in the thing... the fact of the very shadow of the person lying there fixed forever! It is the very sanctification of portraits I think—and it is not at all monstrous in me to say, what my brothers cry out against so vehemently, that I would rather have such a memorial of one I dearly loved, than the noblest artist’s work ever produced.
(1843)
Hilla Becher
[Photographer, b. 1934, Potsdam, d. 2015, Düsseldorf.]
For me, photography is by its very nature free of ideology. Photography with ideology falls to pieces.
Graciela Iturbide
[Photographer, b. 1942, Mexico City, lives in Coyoacán, Mexico.]
Wherever we go we want to find the theme we carry inside ourselves.
