Susie Linfield
[Writer and critic, New York, lives in New York.]
The ability of photographs to conjure deep emotion is one of their great strengths. But this power—precisely because it is divorced from narrative, political context, and analysis—is equally a danger. Ironically, the more searing an image… the more misleading it can be.
Gregory Crewdson
[Photographer, b. 1962, Brooklyn, New York, lives in New Haven Connecticut.]
... I’m interested in using the iconography of nature and the American landscape as surrogates or metaphors for psychological anxiety, fear or desire.
Francesca Woodman
[Photographer, b. 1958, Denver, Colorado, d. 1981, New York.]
Things looked funny because my pictures depend on an emotional state... I know this is true and I thought about this for a long time. Somehow it made me feel very, very good.
James Nachtwey
[Photographer, b. 1948, Syracuse, New York, lives in New York.]
If I can upset people, if I can ruin their day, then I have done my job.
Chris Marker
[Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1921, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Île-de-France, d. 2012, Paris.]
We feel more emotion... before an amateur photograph linked to our own life history than before the work of a Great Photographer, because his domain partakes of art, and the intent of the souvenir-object remains at the lower level of personal history.
Danny Lyon
[Photographer, b. 1942, New York, lives in Ulster County, New York.]
You put a camera in my hand, I want to get close to people. Not physically close, emotionally close, all of it. It’s part of the process. It’s a very weird thing being a photographer.
Nobuyoshi Araki
[Photographer, b. 1940, Tokyo, lives in Tokyo.]
...the time when a picture is taken is like an emotion, it’s like a sexual encounter. It’s like a fuck! So, timing is very important.
Walker Evans
[Photographer, b. 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1975, New Haven, Connecticut.]
There are several tenets that go with this craft of ours. One of them is that the real gift and value in a picture is really not a thought; it is a sensation based on feeling.
