Jacob Riis
[Photographer and reformer, b. 1849, Denmark, d. 1914, Barre, Massachusetts.]
When the report was submitted to the Health Board the next day, it did not make much of an impression—these things rarely do, put in mere words—until my negatives, still dripping from the dark-room, came to reinforce them. From them there was no appeal.
(1918) 
William Garnett
[Photographer, b. 1916, Chicago, d. 2006, Napa, California.]
To show people the ugly doesn’t accomplish much. I came to the conclusion that I can’t really make much of a change in society’s attitude towards land use by just showing them what’s wrong. I’ve come to the conclusion you have to show them what’s right, and inspire them.
Walter Benjamin
[Philosopher, critic, and theorist, b. 1892, Berlin, d. 1940, Port Bou, France.]
What we must demand from the photographer is the ability to put such a caption beneath his picture as will rescue it from the ravages of modishness and confer upon it a revolutionary use value.
Lewis Hine
[Photographer, writer, and reformer, b. 1874, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, d. 1940, New York.]
Perhaps you are weary of child labor pictures. Well, so are the rest of us, but we propose to make you and the whole country so sick and tired of the whole business that when the time for action comes, child-labor pictures will be records of the past.
(1909)
Martin Luther King
[Civil rights leader, religious leader, b. 1929, Atlanta, Georgia, d. 1968, Memphis, Tennessee.]
I’m not being cold blooded about it, but it is so much more important for you to take a picture of us getting beaten up than for you to be another person joining in the fray.
(To photographer Flip Schulke at a civil rights march.)
William Klein
[Photographer, b. 1928, New York, lives in Paris.]
I thought New York had it coming, that it needed a kick in the balls. When I returned to New York, I wanted to get even. Now I had a weapon, photography.
Gordon Parks
[Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1912, Fort Scott, Kansas, d. 2006, New York.]
I have always felt as though I needed a weapon against evil.
Bertolt Brecht
[Dramatist, director and poet, b. 1898, Augsburg, Germany, d. 1956, East Berlin.]
Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it.
