Barbara Kruger
[Artist, b. 1945, Newark, New Jersey, lives in New York.]
I worked with someone else’s photos; I cropped them in whatever way I wanted and put words on top of them. I knew how to do it with my eyes closed. Why couldn’t that be my art?
Thomas Ruff
[Photographer, b. 1958, Zell, Germany, lives in Dusseldorf, Germany.]
The newspaper photograph is the stepchild of photography. It’s cut at random to fit into an article, captioned, and turned into an illustration of the text.
George W. Bush
[Politician, b. 1946, in New Haven, Connecticut, lives in Dallas, Texas.]
One of the great things about books is sometimes there are some fantastic pictures.
Jean Baudrillard
[Writer and theorist, b. 1929, Reims, France, d. 2007, Paris.]
I know a little about photography... but not very much. I came to it as a diversion or a hobby and yet at the same time, it was also something serious, in the sense that it offered an alternative to writing—it was a completely different activity which came from elsewhere and had no connection with writing.
Constantin Brâncu?i
[Sculptor, b. 1876, Hobi?a, Romania, d. 1957, Paris.]
Why write [about my art]? Why not just show the photographs?
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.
Duane Michals
[Photographer, b. 1932, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]
I write with this photograph not to tell you what you can see, rather to express what is invisible. I write to express these feelings. We are our feelings.
Eliot Porter
[Photographer, b. 1901, Winnetka, Illinois, d. 1990, Santa Fe, New Mexico.]
I don't think it’s necessary to put your feelings about photography in words. I’ve read things that photographers have written for exhibitions and so forth about their subjective feelings about photography and mostly I think it’s disturbing. I think they’re fooling themselves very often. They’re just talking, they’re not
saying anything.
