Albert Bierstadt
[Painter, b. 1830, Solingen, Germany, d. 1902, New York.]
We have a great many Indian subjects. We were quite fortunate in getting them, the natives not being willing to have the brass tube of the camera pointed at them. Of course they were astonished when we showed them pictures they did not sit for; and the best we have taken have been obtained without the knowledge of the parties, which is, in fact, the best way to take any portraits.
Dawoud Bey
[Photographer, b. 1953, Queens, New York, lives in Chicago.]
While I have devised various formal strategies for articulating [my] concerns, I think fundamentally the work is driven by a basic curiosity. I seek to find out things about people by making photographs of them.
Bill Brandt
[Photographer, b. 1904, Hamburg, Germany, d. 1983, London.]
I always take portraits in my sitter’s own surroundings. I concentrate very much on the picture as a whole and leave the sitter rather to himself. I hardly talk and barely look at him.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]
When the subject is in any way uneasy, the personality goes away where the camera can’t reach it. There are no systems, for each case is individual and demands that we be unobtrusive, though we must be at close range.
Alvin Langdon Coburn
[Photographer, b. 1882, Boston, Massachusetts, d. 1966, Wales.]
I have not attempted to do anything eccentric in the way of portrayals, but I have studied my men and their works with enthusiasm, and in each instance I have tried to catch and reveal the elusive something that differentiates a man of talent from his fellows, and makes life worth while, worth struggling with towards ever great understanding.
(1913)
Jacques-Henri Lartigue
[Photographer, b. 1894, Courbevoie, France, d. 1986, Nice, France.]
Papa is like God (as a matter of fact, he might even be God in disguise). He’s just told me, “I’m going to give you your own camera.” Now I will be able to make portraits of everything...
everything.
(Childhood diary entry, 1901)
Herman Melville
[Writer, b. 1819, New York, d. 1891, New York.]
With what infinite readiness now, the most faithful portrait of any one could be taken by the Daguerreotype, whereas in former times a faithful portrait was only within the power of the moneyed, or mental aristocrats of the earth. How natural then the inference, that instead of, as in old time, immortalizing a genius, a portrait now only dayalzed a dunce. Besides when every body has his portrait published, true distinction lies in not having yours published at all. For if you are published along with Tom, Dick, and Harry, and wear a coat of their cut, how are you distinct from Tom, Dick, and Harry?
Albert Einstein
[Scientist, b. 1879, Ulm, Württemberg, Germany, d. 1955, Princeton, New Jersey.]
I dislike every photograph taken of me. However, this one I dislike a little bit less.
(On the portrait by Philippe Halsman, who he excluded from his normal characterization of photographers as Lichtaffen—“Light monkeys.”)
