Joe Rosenthal
[Photographer, b. 1911, Washington, D.C., d. 2006, Novato, California.]
Had I posed that shot, I would, of course, have ruined it. I’d have picked fewer men... I would also have made them turn their heads so that they could be identified for AP members throughout the country and nothing like the existing picture would have resulted.
(On his photograph of U.S. Marines raising the American flag on Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima.) 
Graham Nash
[Musician, photographer, and collector, b. 1942, Blackpool, Lancashire, England, lives in Encino, California.]
What I shoot are moments that disappear in the blink of an eye if you don’t have the courage or the discipline to have your camera with you. I can’t tell you how many fucking times I missed Elvis coming back on the elevator... and it pisses me off! I still try to carry my camera every single moment.
Carl Mydans
[Photographer, b. 1907, Boston, Massachusetts, d. 2004, New York.]
As our landing craft neared the beach I saw that the SeaBees had had gotten there before us and had laid a pontoon walkway out from the beach. As we headed for it, I climbed the boat’s ramp and jumped onto the pontoons so that I could photograph MacArthur as he walked ashore. But in the instant of my jumping I heard the boat’s engines reversing and, swinging around, I saw the boat rapidly backing away. Judging what was happening, I raced to the beach and ran dry-shod some hundred yards along it and stood waiting for the boat to come to me. When it did, it dropped its ramp in knee-deep water and I photographed MacArthur wading ashore. No one I have ever known in public life had a better understanding of the drama and power of a picture.
(On General Douglas MacArthur’s return to Luzon, January 9, 1945.)
Shomei Tomatsu
[Photographer, b. 1930, Nagoya, Japan, d. 2012, Okinawa, Japan.]
When I am faced with the victims of the bomb, I find myself almost praying as I release the shutter of my camera. It is as if they are the God of the fin-de-siècle, Christ of the nuclear age.
Dorothea Lange
[Photographer, b. 1895, Hoboken, New Jersey, d. 1965, San Francisco.]
I saw and approached the hungry and desperate mother, as if drawn by a magnet. I do not remember how I explained my presence or my camera to her but I do remember she asked me no questions. I made five exposures, working closer and closer from the same direction. I did not ask her name or her history...
Hu?nh Công “Nick” Ut
[Photographer, b. 1951, rural Mekong Delta, province of Long An, Vietnam, lives in Los Angeles.]
When we moved closer to the village we saw the first people running. I thought ‘Oh my God’ when I suddenly saw a woman with her left leg badly burned by napalm. Then came a woman carrying a baby, who died, then another woman carrying a small child with its skin coming off. When I took a picture of them I heard a child screaming and saw that young girl who had pulled off all her burning clothes. She yelled to her brother on her left. Just before the napalm was dropped soldiers had yelled to the children to run but there wasn’t enough time.
(On his photograph of nine-year-old Kim Phuc fleeing the village of Trang Bang, Vietnam after it was napalm bombed in 1972.)
Sabrina Harman
[U.S. military guard at Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq, b. 1978, Lorton, Virginia, lives in Virginia.]
On June 23 I saw my first dead body I took pictures! The other day I heard my first grenade go off. Fun!
(To her father, June 23, 2003, written from Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq)
Alfred Eisenstaedt
[Photographer, b. 1898, Dirschau, West Prussia (now Tczew, Poland), d. 1995, New York.]
[I was following the sailor] running along the street grabbing any and every girl in sight. Whether she was a grandmother, stout, thin, old, didn’t make any difference. None of the pictures that were possible pleased me. Then, suddenly in a flash, I saw something white being grabbed. I turned around and clicked the moment the sailor kissed the nurse.
(On his Times Square photo taken in V-J Day.)
