Dorothea Lange
[Photographer, b. 1895, Hoboken, New Jersey, d. 1965, San Francisco.]
Pick a theme and work it to exhaustion... the subject must be something you truly love or truly hate.
Ishiuchi Miyako
[Photographer, b. 1947, Gunma Prefecture, Japan, lives in Tokyo.]
I cannot stop [taking photographs of scars] because they are so much like a photograph… They are visible events, recorded in the past. Both the scars and the photographs are the manifestation of sorrow for the many things which cannot be retrieved...
Joan Fontcuberta
[Photographer, b. 1955, Barcelona, lives in Barcelona.]
Photography… has lived under the tyranny of its subject matter: the object has exercised an almost total domination.
Grant Mudford
[Photographer, b. 1944, Sydney, Australia, lives in Los Angeles.]
I realized eventually that if I was really on top of what I was doing, I should be able to make photographs out of almost anything.
Michael Snow
[Filmmaker, photographer, and artist, b. 1929, Toronto, Canada, lives in Toronto.]
To extend the depth of what has been called ‘art’ into photography requires... making available to the spectator the amazing transformations the subject undergoes to become the photograph.
Harold Feinstein
[Photographer, b. 1931, Brooklyn, New York, lives in New York.]
On one hand you want to see your subject well. On the other hand, you want to be caught off guard to retain the spontaneity. If you know your subject too well you stop seeing it.
Walker Evans
[Photographer, b. 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1975, New Haven, Connecticut.]
A garbage can, occasionally, to me at least, can be beautiful. That’s because you’re seeing. Some people are able to see that—see it and feel it. I lean toward the enchantment, the visual power, of the esthetically rejected subject.
William Carlos Williams
[Writer and poet, b. 1883, Rutherford, New Jersey, d. 1963, Rutherford.]
No ideas but in things.
