Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]
As I photograph with my little Leica, I have the feeling that there is something so right about it: with one eye that is closed one looks within. With the other eye that is open one looks without.
Julio Cortázar
[Writer, b. 1914, Brussels, Belgium, d. 1984, Paris, France.]
...to be only the lens of my camera, something fixed, rigid, incapable of intervention.
Pipilotti Rist
[Artist, b. 1962, Reinthal, Switzerland, lives in Zurich and Los Angeles.]
Sexuality, eroticism and desire are important for all of us. But that is also the contradiction. How can we speak about pictures and, for example, say no to this way of representing a woman’s body? It’s also a camera-and-object problem, of who is really guiding the camera.
Joyce Tenneson
[Photographer, b. 1945, Weston, Massachusetts, lives in New York.]
I want to allow others to reveal and celebrate aspects of themselves that are usually hidden. My camera is a witness. It holds a light up for my subjects to help them feel their own essence, and gives them the courage to collaborate in the recording of these revelations.
Lucas Samaras
[Artist, b. 1936, Kastoria, Greece, lives in New York.]
You don’t have to say that nature is aware of your existence, that God knows you are here and you are suffering or having joy. The camera gives you proof that you have lived at least once.
Todd Walker
[Photographer, b. 1917, Salt Lake City, Utah, d. 1998, Tucson, Arizona.]
I came to photography with the desire to conquer this machine, the camera, and make it my slave. Instead, I have now a respect for it and all machines as expanders of my awareness.
Annie Leibovitz
[Photographer, b. 1949, Westbury, Connecticut, lives in New York.]
If I didn’t have my camera to remind me constantly, I am here to do this, I would eventually have slipped away, I think. I would have forgotten my reason to exist.
Lisette Model
[Photographer, b. 1906, Vienna, Austria, d. 1983, New York.]
Placed between the eye of the photographer and the world, the camera reveals both man and the outside world. This in effect is the main photographic situation.
