Roland Barthes
[Writer, critic, and theorist, b. 1915, Cherbourg, d. 1980, Paris.]
When we look at a photograph of ourselves or of others, we are really looking at the return of the dead.
James Agee
[Writer, b. 1909, Knoxville, Tennessee, d. 1955, New York.]
Walker [Evans] setting up the terrible structure of the tripod crested by the black square heavy head, dangerous as that of a hunchback, of the camera; stooping beneath cloak and cloud of wicked cloth, and twisting buttons; a witchcraft preparing, colder than keenest ice, and incalculably cruel.
(On Walker Evans photographing three tenant farmer families in Hale County, Alabama, 1936)
Malick Sidibé
[Photographer, b. 1935, Soloba, Mali, d. 2016, Bamako, Mali.]
It’s a world, someone’s face. When I capture it, I see the future of the world.
Susie Linfield
[Writer and critic, New York, lives in New York.]
The best photographic portraits, like the best painted portraits, present us not with biographical information but with a soul.
Robert Frank
[Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1924, Zürich, Switzerland, lives in Mabou, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia, Canada, and New York.]
I hate to be photographed. I can’t stand to be pinned in front of a camera. I do that to people. I don’t like it done to me.
Tom Wolfe
[Writer, b. 1930, Richmond, Virginia, d. 2018, New York.]
[Richard Avedon] began standing people up against white no-seam paper and lighting their faces so that every wen, hickey, zit, whitehead, blackhead, goober, acne-crater, beard follicle, nose hair, ear bristle, crow’s foot, wattle, mold, eye bag, and liver spot stood out like a tumor, and the poor grey souls looked like pustular ruins, sad, spent, demoralized. Ah, Lord, you never get out of this world alive! This was
serious work.
Imogen Cunningham
[Photographer, b. 1883, Portland, d. 1976, San Francisco.]
So many people dislike themselves so thoroughly that they never see any reproduction of themselves that suits. None of us is born with the right face. It’s a tough job being a portrait photographer.
Sally Mann
[Photographer, b. 1951, Lexington, Virginia, lives in Lexington.]
If transgression is at the very heart of photographic portraiture, then the ideal outcome—beauty, communion, honesty, empathy—mitigates the offense.
