Edward Said
[Writer and critic, b. 1935, Jerusalem, British-ruled Palestine, d. 2003, New York.]
But I do not know whether the photograph can, or does, say things as they really are. Something has been lost. But the representation is all we have.
Charles Baudelaire
[Writer, b. 1821, Paris, d. 1867, Paris.]
Our squalid society rushed, Narcissus to a man, to gaze on its trivial image on a scrap of metal.
Simone de Beauvoir
[Writer and philosopher, b. 1908, Paris, d. 1986, Paris.]
Representation of the world like the world itself is the work of men, they describe it from their point of view which they confuse with absolute truth.
Robert Morris
[Artist and theorist, b. 1931, Kansas City, Missouri, lives in New York.]
There is probably no defense against the malevolent powers of the photograph to convert every visible aspect of the world into a static, consumable image.
André Bazin
[Film critic and theorist, b. 1918, Angers, France, d. 1958, Nogent-sur-Marne, Île-de-France, France.]
All the arts are based on the presence of man, only photography derives an advantage from his absence.
Italo Calvino
[Writer, b. 1923, Santiago de la Vegas, Cuba, d. 1985, Siena, Italy.]
Whatever person you decide to photograph, or whatever thing, you must go on photographing it always, exclusively, at every hour of the day and night.
Dennis Oppenheim
[Artist, b. 1938, Electric City, Washington, d. 2011, New York.]
You can’t understand how strange it was to be a sculptor who exhibited photographs.
(On exhibitions of his “earthworks” and land art pieces.)
Robert Rauschenberg
[Artist, b. 1925, Port Arthur, Texas, d. 2008, Captiva Island, Florida.]
I don’t want a picture to look like something it isn’t. I want it to look like something it is.
