Thomas Ruff
[Photographer, b. 1958, Zell, Germany, lives in Dusseldorf, Germany.]
Actually, I still find it a bit strange that artists working in the early ‘80s would take their theoretical point of departure in philosophical texts from the ‘60s. I was always optimistic enough to think that artists would stick their noses a little bit further into the future and that the theoreticians would formulate things afterward.
Richard Misrach
[Photographer, b. 1949, Los Angeles, lives in San Francisco.]
Perhaps the real impulse that eventually translated into picturing things comes from my father’s wild enthusiasm for everything observed: “That’s the most beautiful sunset I have ever seen,” “That is the most beautiful tree I have ever seen,” and so forth. I nicknamed him hyperbolic Bob.
Shirin Neshat
[Artist, photographer, and filmmaker, b. 1957, Qazvin, Iran, lives in New York.]
Those of us living in the state of “in between” have certain advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of being exposed to a new culture and in my case the freedom that comes with living in the USA. The disadvantages of course being that you will never experience again being a “center” or quite “home” anywhere...
Hans Haacke
[Artist, b. 1936, Cologne, Germany, lives in New York.]
An artist is not an isolated system. In order to survive he has to continuously interact with the world around him.
Jerry Uelsmann
[Photographer, b. 1934, Detroit, Michigan, lives in Gainesville, Florida.]
I have my own attitudes to work with, my own ritual, my game of involvement. Images create other images. I cannot be asked to be something other than what I am, but I enjoy mind-prodding and mind-stretching.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]
I was marked, not by Surrealist painting, but by the conceptions of Breton [which] satisfied me a great deal: the role of spontaneous expression and of intuition and, above all, the attitude of revolt.
Richard Prince
[Artist, b. 1949, Panama Canal Zone, lives in New York.]
We do not make art. We have unnamable motors and dangerous impulses that occupy our thoughts.
Nathan Lyons
[Photographer, writer, and curator, b. 1930, Jamaica, New York, d. 2016, Rochester, New York.]
The accidents of millions of amateurs devoid of a picture vocabulary—which produced an outpouring of multiple exposures, distortions, unusual perspectives, foreshortening of planes, imbalance—has contributed greatly to the visual vocabulary of all media since before the turn of the century.
