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.
Eugene Richards
[Photographer, b. 1944, Dorchester, Massachusetts, lives in New York.]
…it is pretentious for photographers to believe that their pictures alone change things. If they did, we wouldn’t be besieged by war, by incidents of genocide, by hunger. A more realistic assessment of photography’s value is to point out that it is illustrative of what’s going on, that it provides a record of history, that photographs can prompt dialogue.
Phil Stern
[Photographer, b. 1919, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, d. 2014, Los Angeles.]
If you’re lucky enough to have captured maybe two hundred memorable pictures, you still haven’t captured that much experience, have you?
Henry Luce
[Publisher, b. 1898, Dengzhou, China, d. 1967, Phoenix, Arizona.]
To see life. To see the world. To watch the faces of the poor, and the gestures of the proud. To see strange things. Machines, armies, multitudes, and shadows in the jungle. To see, and to take pleasure in seeing. To see and be instructed. To see and be amazed.
(Describing the powers of photography; written for the launch of LIFE Magazine, 1936.)
August Sander
[Photographer, b. 1876, Herdorf, Germany, d. 1964, Cologne.]
Nothing is more abhorrent to me than sugary-sweet photography full of pretense, poses, and gimmickry. For this reason, I have allowed myself to tell the truth about our times and people in a sincere manner.
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
The Western memory museum is now mostly a visual one.
Joe Rosenthal
[Photographer, b. 1911, Washington, D.C., d. 2006, Novato, California.]
It has been done in oils, water colors, pastels, chalk and match sticks. A float based on it won a prize in a Rose Bowl parade, and the flag-raising has been re-enacted by children, by gymnasts... and as a part of the Orange Bowl pageant in Miami. It has been sculpted in ice and in hamburger.
(On his photograph of U.S. Marines raising the American flag on Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima.)
Mark Klett
[Photographer, b. 1952, Albany, New York, lives in Tempe, Arizona.]
In this world, the spots where the present seems to overlap the past are the most important. These are the points when one becomes aware that the direction of the world can change.
