Geoffrey Batchen
[Photohistorian, b. 1956, Australia, lives in Wellington, New Zealand.]
Everyone concedes that photography is now a medium of exchange as much as a mode of documentation.... photographing has become “the visual equivalent of cellphone chatter.”
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
A photograph is not only an image (as a painting is an image), an interpretation of the real; it is also a trace, something directly stenciled off the real, like a footprint or a death mask.
Paul Graham
[Photographer, b. 1956, Stafford, England, lives in New York.]
[The] unique qualities of [photography are] its struggle to deal with time and life. Sometimes I think those are our materials. Not film, not paper, not prints: time and life.
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
In some way I would suggest that photography is not so much an art as a meta-art. It’s an art which devours other art... photography takes the whole world as its subject, cannibalizes all art forms, and converts them into images. And in that sense it seems a peculiarly modern art form.
Garry Winogrand
[Photographer, b. 1928, New York, d. 1984, Tijuana, Mexico.]
Every photograph is a battle of form versus content. The good ones are on the border of failure.
Gregory Crewdson
[Photographer, b. 1962, Brooklyn, New York, lives in New Haven Connecticut.]
Photography is a lonely endeavor, and I think all photographers are in one way or another drawn to the medium by kind of an alienated viewpoint.
John Szarkowski
[Curator, critic, historian, and photographer, b. 1925, Ashland, Wisconsin, d. 2007, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.]
Photography is a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. The contest can be held anywhere...
Marc Riboud
[Photographer, b. 1923, St.-Genis-Laval, France, d. 2016, Paris.]
I’m often asked: Did you get what you wanted? But how should I know what I wanted? A photo is an encounter, a surprise.
