Martha Rosler
[Artist, b. 1943, Brooklyn, New York, lives in New York.]
Just going out on a foray to assemble a collection of street trophies about this or that running social sore can’t be effective—and never was.
Eddie Adams
[Photojournalist, b. 1933, New Kensington, Pennsylvania, d. 2004, New York.]
Still photographs are the most powerful weapons in the world. Words and pictures have a continuing struggle for primacy. In my mind, a person can write the best story in the world; but a photograph is absolute.
Tim Page
[Photographer, b. 1944, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, lives in Brisbane, Australia.]
Every good war picture becomes an anti-war picture.
Allen Ginsberg
[Poet and writer, b. 1926, Newark, New Jersey, d. 1997, New York.]
Whoever controls the media—the images—controls the culture.
Nora Ephron
[Writer, b. 1941, New York, d. 2012, New York.]
That [photographs] disturb readers is exactly as it should be: that’s why photojournalism is often more powerful than written journalism.
Abigail Solomon-Godeau
[Writer and theorist, b. 1947, New York, lives in Santa Barbara, California.]
In the final analysis, photography... is ever a hireling, ever the hired gun.
Ernest Cole (Ernest Levi Tsoloane Kole)
[Photographer, chronicler of Apartheid, b. 1940, Eersterust, South Africa, d. 1990, New York.]
In my observation of the Black man’s life in South Africa as presented in
House of Bondage, my personal attitude was committed to exposing the evils of South Africa.
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
Let the atrocious images haunt us. Even if they are only tokens, and cannot possibly encompass most of the reality to which they refer, they still perform a vital function. The images say: This is what human beings are capable of doing—may volunteer to do, enthusiastically, self-righteously. Don’t forget.
