Neil Postman
[Writer and media critic, b. 1931, New York, d. 2003, Queens, New York.]
You can only photograph a fragment of the here and now. The photograph presents the world as object; language, the world as idea.
Gordon Parks
[Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1912, Fort Scott, Kansas, d. 2006, New York.]
Think in terms of images and words. They can be mighty powerful when they are fitted together properly.
Jacques-Henri Lartigue
[Photographer, b. 1894, Courbevoie, France, d. 1986, Nice, France.]
To talk about photos rather than making them seems idiotic to me. It’s as though I went on and on about a woman I adored instead of making love to her.
Arthur Rothstein
[Writer, b. 1915, New York, d. 1985, New Rochelle, New York.]
...a photographer must be aware of and concerned about the words that accompany a picture. These words should be considered as carefully as the lighting, exposure and composition of the photograph.
Roland Barthes
[Writer, critic, and theorist, b. 1915, Cherbourg, d. 1980, Paris.]
The image freezes an endless number of possibilities; words determine a single certainty... this is why all news photographs are captioned.
Lewis Hine
[Photographer, writer, and reformer, b. 1874, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, d. 1940, New York.]
If I could tell the story in words, I wouldn’t need to lug a camera.
James Agee
[Writer, b. 1909, Knoxville, Tennessee, d. 1955, New York.]
If I could do it, I’d do no writing at all here. It would all be photographs.
(In the 1941 book with photographs by Walker Evans Let Us Now Praise Famous Men
)
Wright Morris
[Writer and photographer, b. 1910, Central City, Nebraska, d. 1998, Mill Valley, California.]
The photograph, after all, is just a photograph. Words will determine its meaning and status.
