Claude Lévi-Strauss
[Anthropologist, b. 1908, Brussels, Belgium, d. 2009, Paris.]
Perhaps the public imagines that the charms of the savages can be appropriated through the medium of these photographs. Not content with having eliminated the savage life, and unaware even of having done so, it feels the need feverishly to appease the nostalgic cannibalism of history with the shadows of those history has already destroyed.
Frederick Douglass
[Writer, orator, activist, b. 1818, Talbot County, Maryland, d. 1895, Washington, D.C..]
Poets, prophets and reformers are all picture makers—and this ability is the secret of their power and of their achievements.
Diane Arbus
[Photographer, b. 1923, New York, d. 1971, New York.]
Nothing is ever the same as they said it was.
David Levi Strauss
[Writer and critic, b. 1953, Junction City, Kansas, lives in New York.]
The first question must always be: Who is using this photograph, and to what end?
Robert Capa (Endre Ern? Friedmann)
[Photographer, b. 1913, Budapest, Hungary, d. 1954, Thai Binh, Vietnam.]
The [concentration camps] were swarming with photographers and every new picture of horror served only to diminish the total effect. Now, for a short day, everyone will see what happened to those poor devils in those camps; tomorrow, very few will care what happens to them in the future.
Antonin Kratochvil
[Photographer, b. 1947, Lovisice, Czechoslovakia, lives in New York.]
Stalin said artists are the engineers of human souls. I wanted to show what happens to the soul when the engineers get through with it.
William J. T. Mitchell
[Writer, theorist, and architect, b. 1944, Melbourne, Australia, lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
The “taking” of human subjects by a photographer (or a writer) is a concrete social encounter, often between a damaged, victimized, and powerless individual and a relatively privileged observer, often acting as the “eye of power,” the agent of some social, political, or journalistic institution.
Antonin Kratochvil
[Photographer, b. 1947, Lovisice, Czechoslovakia, lives in New York.]
I was repelled by the sleazy reality of the totalitarian countries: politicians were shameless. There were corruption, pollution, shoddy goods, long lines, and suicide everywhere, but the leaders kept boasting about their great achievements and bright tomorrows. I saw all this and tried to show it in my pictures as simply and straightforwardly as I could. All I wanted to do was record how all these poor people adapted to lies and suffering, how they got used to it, how, in fact they were bound to miss it when it was over.
