Joseph Goebbels
[Nazi Minister of Propaganda, b. 1897, Rheydt, Germany, d. 1945, Berlin.]
Photography today is accomplishing a lofty mission in which every German should collaborate by buying a camera. The German people is ahead of every other in the technical domain and, thanks to its exceptional qualities, the small camera has conquered the whole world... Much is at stake here from the point of view of popular consumer goods and, furthermore, photography has a particularly important political role to play.
(Addressing the Berlin Photography Fair, 1933) 
Subcommander Marcos (Rafael Sebastian Guillén Vicente)
[Professor and revolutionary, b. 1957, Tampico, Mexico, lives in Chiapas, Mexico.]
Every time the diaphragm winks, the camera repeats the question that now travels through cyberspace and invades, as a modern virus, the memories of machines, men and women. The question that history sets forth. The question which forces us to define ourselves and whose answer makes us human: On which side are you?
David Hockney
[Artist, b. 1937, Bradford, England, lives in Bridlington, Yorkshire; London; and Los Angeles.]
If we are to change our world view, images have to change. The artist now has a very important job to do. He’s not a little peripheral figure entertaining rich people, he’s really needed.
A.D. Coleman
[Critic and writer, b. 1943, New York, lives in New York.]
Neutrality is in itself a political stance, favoring as it does the status quo. Why have we permitted this mythology of objectivity/neutrality to be pulled over our eyes? Why do we tolerate it from the mouths of those who, more than any, should know better—the photographers themselves?
Georges Didi-Huberman
[Writer and thinker, b. 1953, Saint-Etienne, France, lives in Paris.]
These days, everyone seems to agree that images are at the heart of our culture, in our acts of barbarity or, in any case, our political apparatus. So thinking about images leads to an awareness of the situation…
(2006)
Paolo Gasparini
[Photographer, b. 1934, Gorizia, Italy, lives in Caracas, Venezuela.]
I think photographs can help us learn how to look. How to think about and resist this world that’s consecrated to the grandiloquence of symbols that propagate lies and that, more and more, reduce and undervalue life.
Martha Rosler
[Artist, b. 1943, Brooklyn, New York, lives in New York.]
Just going out on a foray to assemble a collection of street trophies about this or that running social sore can’t be effective—and never was.
Tim Page
[Photographer, b. 1944, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, lives in Brisbane, Australia.]
Every good war picture becomes an anti-war picture.
