Charis Wilson
[Model, b. 1914, San Francisco, d. 2009, Santa Cruz, California.]
Well, there’s a famous limerick on [making love with the model]:While Titian was mixing rose madder,
His model was posed on a ladder,
Her position to Titian,
Suggested coition,
So he ran up the ladder and had her.
William Claxton
[Photographer, b. 1927, Pasadena, California, d. 2008, Los Angeles.]
Was I going to let my wife show her breasts in public? We hassled about it for a long time. Finally, we decided to employ nepotism. Only I could photograph it, we would have control of the pictures and Peggy would never model the suit in public. And it worked out okay. The pictures were tasteful, I thought, Peggy looked great, and it was historically a breakthrough for women, that they could feel free enough to show the beauty of their breasts. (On making the famous photograph of his wife Peggy Moffitt wearing Rudi Gernreich’s topless bathing suit.) Nikki S. Lee
[Photographer, b. 1970, Kye-Chang, Korea, lives in New York.]
As for the fashion world, the one thing I respect is its shallowness: it’s so deep—it's so serious. It can be hard to get that kind of shallowness because of its depth and seriousness. Ellen von Unwerth
[Photographer, b. 1954, Frankfurt, Germany, lives in New York.]
I don’t stand behind the camera drooling. Knowing that, the models are more likely to open up and relax. Robert Mapplethorpe
[Photographer, b. 1946, Floral Park, Long Island, d. 1989, Boston, Massachusetts.]
A cock is more problematic [than flowers] when you’re photographing, especially if you want it erect. You can’t jiggle the lights as much, and it’s hard to refine the photograph as much as you’d like... William Wegman
[Artist, b. 1943, Holyoke, Massachusetts, lives in New York.]
My Weimaraners are perfect fashion models. Their elegant, slinky forms are covered in gray—and gray, everyone knows, goes with anything. Patti Smith
[Musician, artist, and writer, b. 1946, Chicago, Illinois, lives in Detroit and New York.]
Robert [Mapplethorpe] was concerned with how to make the photograph, and I with how to be the photograph. Henry Miller
[Writer, b. 1890, New York, d. 1980, Pacific Palisades, California.]
One day I fell in with a photographer; he was making a collection of the slimy joints of Paris for some degenerate in Munich. He wanted to know if I would pose for him with my pants down, and in other ways.... But since I was assured that the photographs were for a strictly private collection, and since it was destined for Munich, I gave my consent.
(1934, on events arising from his friendship in Paris with Brassaï)