Mariana Yampolsky
[Photographer, b. 1925, Chicago, d. 2002, Mexico City.]
I always try to go beneath the surface, although many photographers find that to be painful.
Ray Metzker
[Photographer, b. 1931, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, d. 2014, Philadelphia.]
I don’t need exotic places to be stimulated. Out of familiarity comes nuance. The more you revisit a subject the more you’re like to discover.
Stephen Shore
[Photographer, b. 1947, New York, lives in New York.]
I was photographing every meal I ate, every person I met, every waiter or waitress who served me, every bed I slept in, every toilet I used.
(On his 1972 American road trip)
Luigi Ghirri
[Photographer, b. 1943, Scandiano, Italy, d. 1992, Reggio Emilia, Italy.]
The most important lesson I received from Conceptual art consisted in the recording of simple and obvious things, and viewing them under a whole new light.
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.
Saul Leiter
[Photographer, b. 1923, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, d. 2013, New York.]
I go out to take a walk, I see something, I take a picture. I take photographs. I have avoided profound explanations of what I do.
Richard Avedon
[Photographer, b. 1923, New York, d. 2004, San Antonio, Texas.]
The point is that you can’t get at the thing itself, the real nature of the sitter, by stripping away the surface. The surface is all you’ve got. You can only get beyond the surface by working with the surface. All that you can do is manipulate that surface—gesture, costume, expression—radically and correctly.
Ralph Steiner
[Photographer, b. 1899, Cleveland, Ohio, d. 1986, Hanover, New Hampshire.]
By showing a picture, you’re showing an x-ray of your heart.
