Oscar Wilde
[Writer, b. 1854, Dublin, d. 1900, Paris, France.]
It is only the shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible.
Edward Weston
[Photographer, b. 1886, Highland Park, Illinois, d. 1958, Wildcat Hill, California.]
To see the
Thing itself is essential: the quintessence revealed direct without the fog of impressionism... This then: to photograph a rock, have it look like a rock, but be
more than a rock. Significant presentation—not interpretation.
Peter Galassi
[Curator and writer, b. 1951, Washington, D.C., lives in New York.]
...photography is equally capable of recording everything and revealing nothing.
(On portraits by Thomas Ruff)
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.
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.
Ansel Adams
[Photographer, b. 1902, San Francisco, d. 1984, Carmel, California.]
To photograph truthfully and effectively is to see beneath the surfaces and record the qualities of nature and humanity which live or are latent in all things.
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)
Robert Adams
[Photographer and writer, b. 1937, Orange, New Jersey, lives in Astoria, Oregon.]
Yes, photographs are only convincing if the photographer pays attention to the facts of life, but photographs have to point beyond the facts.
