Albert Renger-Patzsch
[Artist, b. 1897, Würzburg, Bavaria, Germany, d. 1966, Wamel Dorf, Über Soest, West Germany.]
I’d like to briefly state the accomplishment that we expect from a photographer. He must make the person being photographed forget that he has eaten from the tree of knowledge.
Henry Miller
[Writer, b. 1890, New York, d. 1980, Pacific Palisades, California.]
[The photographer] is like a secretive insect who awaits for the appearance of some unknown epidemic before commencing his ravages. He is stubborn and elusive. He does the banal thing in order to hide his monstrous eccentricities. He has the eye of a ghoul, the indifference of a leper, the calm of a Buddha. He is insatiable. He is a monster—the most amiable, the most courteous, the most raffiné—but a monster.
(On Brassaï, who he lastingly dubbed “the eye of Paris.”)
Martha Rosler
[Artist, b. 1943, Brooklyn, New York, lives in New York.]
Photography [can] be seen as a system of representation that you bring to bear on other systems.
Francis Bacon
[Artist, b. 1909, Dublin, Ireland, d. 1992, Madrid, Spain.]
Jesus would have been one of the best photographers that ever existed. He was always looking at the beauty of people’s souls.
Annie Leibovitz
[Photographer, b. 1949, Westbury, Connecticut, lives in New York.]
I’m pretty used to people not liking having their picture taken. I mean, if you do like to have your picture taken, I worry about you.
Philippe Halsman
[Photographer, b. 1906, Riga, Latvia, d. 1979, New York.]
In a jump the subject, in a sudden burst of energy, overcomes gravity. He cannot simultaneously control his expressions, his facial and his limb muscles. The mask falls. The real self becomes visible. One only has to snap it with the camera.
Walter Benjamin
[Philosopher, critic, and theorist, b. 1892, Berlin, d. 1940, Port Bou, France.]
It is no accident that the portrait was the focal point of early photography. The cult of remembrance of loved ones, absent or dead, offers a last refuge for the cult value of the picture. For the last time the aura emanates from the early photographs in the fleeting expression of a human face. This is what constitutes their melancholy, incomparable beauty.
Brassaï (Gyula Halász)
[Photographer, b. 1889, Brassó, Transylvania, Hungary (now Romania), d. 1984, Eze, Alpes-Maritimes, France.]
... we photographers are nothing but a pack of crooks, thieves and voyeurs. We are to be found everywhere we are not wanted; we betray secrets that were never entrusted to us; we spy shamelessly on things that are not our business; And end up the hoarders of a vast quantity of stolen goods.
