Abbas (Abbas Attar)
[Photographer, b. 1944, Iran, d. 2018, Paris.]
I know that some photographers have big egos, but photography is simple. In the morning, you put a roll of film in your camera—and today you don’t even have to do this with digital. You take to the streets, you come back home, edit your photographs and show them. It’s that simple.
Ralph Steiner
[Photographer, b. 1899, Cleveland, Ohio, d. 1986, Hanover, New Hampshire.]
There are only two hard things in photography; which way to point the camera and when to release the shutter.
Hu?nh Công “Nick” Ut
[Photographer, b. 1951, rural Mekong Delta, province of Long An, Vietnam, lives in Los Angeles.]
One day, there were Buddhist monks burning themselves in Saigon. My boss said, “Nicky, do you want to go take a picture?” I thought, “I’m not a photographer,” but he said, “Go shoot something!” So I shot some pictures. The next day, my picture was on the front page.
Duane Michals
[Photographer, b. 1932, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]
You go to these schools, and the kids all show you gorgeous prints of water running over pebbles. I’d rather see a not-so-gorgeous mistake of a brilliant idea, an idea that maybe the kid didn’t even know how to solve technically, but who cares, because he’s talking about something incredible. It’s not the medium, it’s the message for me.
