Max Pam
[Photographer, b. 1949, Melbourne, Australia, lives in Perth, Australia.]
[My photography teacher] gave me the Mexican Day Books of Edward Weston and just blew me away with this work. The fact that you could be this fabulous visual artist, with all this milieu of people like Diego Rivera and you could sleep with these gorgeous, amazing women, that you could live that life—that photography could deliver you that life.
Sophie Calle
[Artist, b. 1953, Paris, lives in Paris and New York.]
I traveled for seven years, and when I came back home I was completely lost. I didn’t know what to do with my life, so I decided to let people decide for me. For month I followed strangers on the street. For the pleasure of following, not because the party interested me. I photographed them without their knowledge, took note of their movements, and finally lost sight of them. At the end of January 1980, I chose a man and followed him to Venice. That’s how I started. That’s all.
William Eggleston
[Photographer, b. 1939, Memphis, Tennessee, lives in Memphis.]
I don’t look at other photographs much at all. I don’t know why. I study my own a lot.
Manuel Álvarez Bravo
[Photographer, b. 1902, Mexico City, d. 2002, Mexico City.]
A photographer’s main instrument is his eyes. Strange as it may seem, many photographers choose to use the eyes of another photographer, past or present, instead of their own. Those photographers are blind.
Amy Arbus
[Photographer, b. 1954, New York, lives in New York.]
My mother’s work has been an enormous influence on me, but not literally. By that I mean, my photographs don’t look like hers. That makes it difficult to compare them. What they do share is an emotional intensity.
Sheila Metzner
[Photographer, b. 1939, Brooklyn, New York, lives in New York.]
Photographers are often transformed by their own work. They should look at themselves every now and again to make sure they haven't become some kind of beast.
Van Deren Coke
[Photographer, writer, and historian, b. 1921, Lexington, Kentucky, d. 2004, Albuquerque, New Mexico.]
Artists are interested in pictures as sources of ideas for their work. Where the pictures come from and how they are made is of little concern to them.
As the possibilities for straightforward photography seem to have become exhausted it has been the photographers who know about the history of art, not simply the history of photography, who have shaped important directions for the future.
