John Muir
[Self-described "Poetico-trampo-geologist-botanist and ornithologist-naturalist etc.", b. 1838, Dunbar, Scotland, d. 1914, Los Angeles.]
See how willingly Nature poses herself upon photographers’ plates. No earthly chemicals are so sensitive as those of the human soul.
Donald McCullin
[Photographer, b. 1935, Finsbury Park, London, lives in Somerset, England.]
I like photographing the English landscape in the winter, because it’s naked and it’s cold and it’s lonely, and I feel lonely doing it—and yes, I feel as happy as anything. There’s no politics, there’s no one saying: “get off my land!” No one’s pointing a gun at me. It’s almost as if I’m drinking from the flower, as if I’m drinking the pure nectar of freedom.
John Pfahl
[Photographer, b. 1939, New York, lives in Buffalo, New York.]
It would have been possible to structure my photographs in such a way that no indicators of the present were discernible. However, I wanted to incorporate into the project as a whole the jostling of time-frames I would feel as I set up my tripod on various rocky promontories.
Wim Wenders
[Artist and filmmaker, b. 1945, Düsseldorf, lives in Berlin.]
In photography, finally, I found a tool where I could really honor... landscapes and keep them center stage and not be overwhelmed by characters and stories.
Mark Klett
[Photographer, b. 1952, Albany, New York, lives in Tempe, Arizona.]
I am not much interested in discovering new territories to photograph. Instead, what I wish my pictures could do is lessen the distance one often feels when looking at landscape photographs... The longer I work, the more important it is to me to make photographs that tell my story as a participant, and not just an observer of the land.
Emmet Gowin
[Photographer, b. 1941, Danville, Virginia, lives in Princeton, New Jersey.]
When you’re flying over something, you must be open, receptive, you’re not making anything. You can look at it or choose not to look at it, but it’s not anything you can arrange or change. You can only consent or abstain. You don’t have that feeling on the ground. On the ground, you struggle.
Bernd Becher
[Photographer, b. 1931, Siegen, Germany, d. 2007, Rostock, Germany.]
I’ve always said that we are documenting the sacred buildings of Calvinism. Calvinism rejects all forms of art and therefore never developed its own architecture. The buildings we photograph originate directly from this purely economical thinking.
Sophie Ristelhueber
[Photographer, b. 1949, Paris, lives in Paris.]
What prompted me to make these pictures [of bomb-cratered roads] was the impression that the ground was ripped by the shock, that it was swallowing itself.
