Ed Ruscha
[Artist, b. 1937, Omaha, Nebraska, lives in Los Angeles.]
When I first did the book on gasoline stations, people would look at it and say, “Are you kidding or what? Why are you doing this?” In a sense, that’s what I was after: I was after the head-scratching.
Walter Benjamin
[Philosopher, critic, and theorist, b. 1892, Berlin, d. 1940, Port Bou, France.]
No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.
Shirin Neshat
[Artist, photographer, and filmmaker, b. 1957, Qazvin, Iran, lives in New York.]
Beautiful woman wrapped in chadors, with huge machine guns in their hands. Brilliant, shocking, amazingly contradictory images. They compelled me to deeply investigate these ideas.
Andy Warhol
[Artist, b. 1928, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, d. 1987, New York.]
I just [take pictures] because the camera is something to carry around in my pocket.
Anders Petersen
[Photographer, b. 1944, Solna, Sweden, lives in Stockholm.]
That 15th of a second. Once you’ve been there,
you keep on wanting to get back.
Sandy Skoglund
[Photographer, b. 1946, Quincy, Massachusetts, lives in Jersey City, New Jersey.]
The idea of making [conceptual] art was not a good way to approach things... Instead I saw myself as trying to make something that my relatives could understand.
Ben Shahn
[Photographer and artist, b. 1898, Kovno, Russia (now Kaunas, Lithuania), d. 1969, New York.]
I became interested in photography when I found my own sketching was inadequate.
Chuck Close
[Artist, b. 1940, Monroe, Washington, lives in New York.]
I always say that inspiration is for amateurs; the rest of us just show up and get to work.
