Graham Nash
[Musician, photographer, and collector, b. 1942, Blackpool, Lancashire, England, lives in Encino, California.]
I don’t shoot kittens with balls of wool. I don’t shoot sunsets. What draws me? Ironic, surreal, unexplained, timely moments.
Christian Boltanski
[Artist, b. 1944, Paris, lives in Paris.]
... in the eyes of its visitors, Venice has no reality of its own. Anyone visiting the place has already seen so many pictures of it that they can only attempt to view it via these clichés, and they take home photographs of Venice that are similar to the ones they already knew. Venice [is] becoming like one of those painted backdrops that photographers use in their studio.
Bill McKibben
[Writer, b. 1960, Palo Alto, California, lives near Lake Chanokaub, New York.]
After a lifetime of nature shows and magazine photos, we arrive at the woods conditioned to expect splendor—surprised when the parking lot does not contain a snarl of animals attractively mating and killing each other.
Wim Wenders
[Artist and filmmaker, b. 1945, Düsseldorf, lives in Berlin.]
The beautiful image today means nothing. It’s worth shit. In fact, it’s almost as if it has the opposite effect, because you’re just like everything else out there.
Alexey Brodovitch
[Graphic designer and art director, b. 1898, Ogolitchi, Russia, d. 1971, Le Thor, France.]
When you look into your camera, if you see an image you have ever seen before, don’t click the shutter.
Lewis Baltz
[Photographer, b. 1945, Newport Beach, California, d. 2014, Paris.]
If you read what, say, Weston was writing in the 1920s he talked about an industrial medium, reflective surfaces, contemporary subject matter—it’s a straighter line to [Ed] Ruscha’s
26 Gas Stations than it would ever be to Ansel Adam’s pictures of Yosemite and their kitschy calendar sensibility.
Henry Holmes Smith
[Artist and teacher, b. 1909, Bloomington, Illinois, d. 1986, San Rafael, California.]
In a world of disturbing images, the general body of photography is bland, dealing complacently with nature and treating our preconceptions as insights. Strange, private worlds rarely slip past our guard...
Thomas Ruff
[Photographer, b. 1958, Zell, Germany, lives in Dusseldorf, Germany.]
I’ve been interested in the genre of nude photography for a long time. What I find altogether boring is contemporary nude photography of the kind currently carried on by fashion photographers, who take supposedly interesting photographs of pretty models in some pleasant ambience. That’s something for adolescent 13-year-old
Max readers. I’m 41, and when I’m naked I’m either lying in the tub or in bed with my girlfriend. My nude photographs are intended to be somewhat “more adult.”
