Annette Messager
[Artist, b. 1943, Berck-sur-Mer, France, lives in Paris.]
My father was an amateur artist and always gave my brother and me materials to work with. My brother never did much, but I spent my time making small drawings. He exposed me to art books constantly. There was paint everywhere, even on the plants in the garden. He showed me books on Bellmer when I was small. Those images are part of me. I am very close to Bellmer’s doll universe.
Georges Didi-Huberman
[Writer and thinker, b. 1953, Saint-Etienne, France, lives in Paris.]
I feel as if I spent my childhood in a world of images, basically in a world cut off from action.
Irving Penn
[Photographer, b. 1917, Plainfield, New Jersey, d. 2009, New York.]
Sometime in 1964 I realized that I was a victim of a printmaking obsession, a condition that persists today.
Lewis Baltz
[Photographer, b. 1945, Newport Beach, California, d. 2014, Paris.]
Coming from Orange County… I was trying to find a vocabulary to mediate my sense of unspeakable horror at being born when and where I was.
William Klein
[Photographer, b. 1928, New York, lives in Paris.]
I was very consciously trying to do the opposite of what Cartier-Bresson was doing. He did pictures without intervening. He was like the invisible camera. I wanted to be visible in the biggest way possible.
(On his photography in the early 1950s)
Marc Riboud
[Photographer, b. 1923, St.-Genis-Laval, France, d. 2016, Paris.]
Chim told me not to follow too closely the advice of Capa, and Capa told me not to take any notice of Henri’s advice. So I was a bit mixed up and went to see George Rodger… and he said, “Don’t listen to any of them, only to me.”
(On joining the Magnum photo agency in 1953)
George Rodger
[Photojournalist, b. 1908, Hale, Cheshire, England, d. 1995, Smarden, Kent, England.]
I had no contact with my contemporaries in the photographic field, nor even knowledge of their work. So I was influenced by no-one and there were no short cuts for me. I was self-taught the hard way, by trial and error...
Max Pam
[Photographer, b. 1949, Melbourne, Australia, lives in Perth, Australia.]
I set a discipline for myself to return every afternoon and take photographs like Edward Weston: f22, full sun, big set squares, big circles. I would smoke a joint with some hippies on the grass, then go do some more pictures.
