Vicki Goldberg
[Critic and writer, St. Louis, Missouri, lives in New York.]
Often what is nearest is hardest of all to see—try asking a fish to define water. Distance opens a door to revelation. When the first great distances of space were conquered by technology, a camera altered the human perspective on the Earth as radically as Galileo did when he proved the sun was the center of the universe. The ecology movement was born from a photographically altered consciousness.
Ronald Reagan
[Actor and politician, b. 1911, Tampico, Illinois, d. 2004, Bel Air, California.]
I like photographers—you don’t ask questions.
(To a gathering of the White House News Photographers Association)
Tim Page
[Photographer, b. 1944, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, lives in Brisbane, Australia.]
The power of photography and the media is less and less cause the attention of the reader is less and less. Who cares when they just flip the page and see a skateboard or something they want to buy?
Marion Post Wolcott
[Photographer, b. 1910, Bloomfield, New Jersey, d. 1990, Santa Barbara, California.]
My principal concern is to challenge photographers to document, in mixed media if they wish, or even just record, in still photographs as well as film and video, our present quality of life, the causes of the present malaise in our society—and the world—the evidences of it.
Pipilotti Rist
[Artist, b. 1962, Reinthal, Switzerland, lives in Zurich and Los Angeles.]
For me, it’s not important whether [subjects] are naked, half-naked, or dressed. What I’m more interested in is how they present themselves: if someone is half-naked and having self-confidence or you have the feeling that she has or he has control of the situation. She likes to do it. Then I have nothing against it. But it’s true that society doesn’t talk about such issues. They just talk about whether there is a breast or not, but for me it’s more interesting how the power game of camera and object is shown. And if it’s a cool picture.
James Nachtwey
[Photographer, b. 1948, Syracuse, New York, lives in New York.]
If I cave in, if I fold up because of the emotional obstacles that are in front of me, I’m useless. There is no point in me being there in the first place. And I think if you go to places where people are experiencing these kinds of tragedies with a camera, you have a responsibility. The value of it is to make an appeal to the rest of the world, to create an impetus where change is possible through public opinion. Public opinion is created through awareness. My job is to help create the awareness.
Marion Post Wolcott
[Photographer, b. 1910, Bloomfield, New Jersey, d. 1990, Santa Barbara, California.]
Perhaps now, today, there is more opportunity for social commentary through photography because the scope of documentary photography has broadened, and the use of varied techniques to achieve the final image, or series of images, is widely accepted. It is no longer controversial.
Walker Evans
[Photographer, b. 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1975, New Haven, Connecticut.]
My photography was a semi-conscious reaction against right-thinking and optimism; it was an attack on the establishment.
