Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]
The camera is in some ways a sketchbook drawn in time and space, and it is also an admirable instrument that seizes life just as it presents itself.
Duane Michals
[Photographer, b. 1932, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]
People believe in the reality of photographs, but not in the reality of paintings. That gives photographers an enormous advantage. Unfortunately, photographers also believe in the reality of photographs.
Michael Spano
[Photographer, b. 1949, Bronx, New York, lives in Brooklyn, New York.]
All photographs are manipulated—reality doesn’t look like a photograph anyway.
Nick Knight
[Photographer, b. 1958, London, England, lives in London.]
I think photography has been wrestling with a burden of telling the truth, which I don’t think it was ever particularly good at.
Robert Frank
[Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1924, Zürich, Switzerland, lives in Mabou, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, and New York.]
The truth is somewhere between the documentary and the fictional, and that is what I try to show. What is real one moment has become imaginary the next. You believe what you see now, and the next second you don’t anymore.
Philip Jones Griffiths
[Photojournalist, b. 1936, Rhuddian, Wales, d. 2008, London.]
... faking has enjoyed a quantum leap with the advent of computerized manipulation. Now, with digital cameras, there is no “original” to compare... Fraudulent practice is easy and detection difficult, and photography will never be the same again.
Ralph Steiner
[Photographer, b. 1899, Cleveland, Ohio, d. 1986, Hanover, New Hampshire.]
“The camera cannot lie” is true only in the sense that it is a little harder to tell a complete falsehood with a camera than with words.
Duane Michals
[Photographer, b. 1932, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]
Photography deals exquisitely with appearances, but nothing is what it appears to be.
