Eliot Porter
[Photographer, b. 1901, Winnetka, Illinois, d. 1990, Santa Fe, New Mexico.]
My emotions, instincts, and interests are all with nature.
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)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
[Writer, b. 1804, Salem, Massachusetts, d. 1864, Plymouth, New Hampshire.]
I was really a little startled at recognizing myself apart from myself.
(On seeing his first photographic portrait.)
Dennis Hopper
[Actor, artist, and photographer, b. 1936, Dodge City, Kansas, d. 2010, Venice, California.]
... I’m sort of a nervous person with the camera, so I will just shoot arbitrarily until I can focus and compose something, and then I make a shot. So generally, in [the] proof sheets, there are only three or four really concentrated efforts to take a photograph. It’s not like a professional kind of person who sets it up so every photograph looks really cool.
Errol Morris
[Documentary filmmaker, b. 1948, Hewlett, New York, lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
What is it that
angers us?... We have been tricked. In essence, we have been lied to. The problem is not that the photograph has been manipulated, but that we have been manipulated by the photograph.
Clarence John Laughlin
[Photographer, b. 1905, Lake Charles, Louisiana, d. 1985, New Orleans, Louisiana.]
... I frequently attempt to show in my work, in various ways, the unreality of the “real” and the reality of the “unreal.” This may result, at times, in some disturbing effects. But art
should be disturbing; it should make us both think
and feel; it should infect the subconscious as well as the conscious mind; it should never allow complacency nor condone the
status quo.
W. Eugene Smith
[Photographer, b. 1918, Wichita, Kansas, d. 1978, Tucson, Arizona.]
The purpose of all art is to cause a deep and emotion, also one that is entertaining or pleasing. Out of the depth and entertainment comes value.
Margaret Bourke-White
[Photographer, b. 1904, New York, d. 1971, Darien, Connecticut.]
If anybody gets in my way when I'm making a picture, I become irrational. I’m never sure what I’m going to do, or sometimes even aware of what I do—only that I want that picture.
