Isak Dinesen (Karen Blixen)
[Writer, b. 1885, Rungsted, Denmark, d. 1962, Rungsted, Denmark.]
Your own self, your personality and existence are reflected within the mind of each of the people whom you meet, ... into a likeness, a caricature of yourself, which still lives on and appears to be, in some way, the truth about you. Even a flattering picture is... a lie.
Auguste Rodin
[Artist, b. 1840, Paris, France, d. 1917, Paris.]
If the artist only reproduces superficial features as photography does, if he copies the lineaments of a face exactly, without reference to character, he deserves no admiration.
(1911)
Arnold Genthe
[Photographer, b. 1869, Berlin, Germany, d. 1942, New York.]
I was determined to show people a new kind of photography: there would be no stilted poses; as a matter of fact, no poses at all. I would try to take my sitters unawares, at a moment when they would not realize that the camera was ready. I would show them prints in which a uniform sharpness would be avoided and emphasis laid on portraying a person’s character instead of making a commonplace record of clothes and a photographic mask.
Annie Leibovitz
[Photographer, b. 1949, Westbury, Connecticut, lives in New York.]
There is a myth that the portrait photographer is supposed to make the subject relax, and that’s the real person. But I’m interested in
whatever is going on. And I’m not that comfortable myself.
Frederick Douglass
[Writer, orator, activist, b. 1818, Talbot County, Maryland, d. 1895, Washington, D.C..]
Negroes can never have impartial portraits at the hands of white artists. It seems to us next to impossible for white men to take likenesses of black men, without most grossly exaggerating their distinctive features.
Robert Heinecken
[Photographer, b. 1931, Denver, d. 2006, Albuquerque, New Mexico.]
The figure, because of its human, erotic, sensual, and psychological connections, remains my primary subject interest and is the vehicle for the formal content of the work.
Eve Arnold
[Photographer, b. 1913, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, d. 2011, London.]
If the photographer is interested in the people in front of his lens, and if he is compassionate, it’s already a lot. The instrument is not the camera but the photographer.
John Coplans
[Artist, critic, and curator, b. 1920, London, d. 2003, New York.]
The principal thing is the question of how our culture views age: that old is ugly. Take a photographer like Mapplethorpe. Every single photograph of his is about classical notions of beauty, of young beautiful black men, young beautiful women, and he selects subjects who are essentially interesting and good-looking and extremely physical. I can’t stand them.
