Claude Lévi-Strauss
[Anthropologist, b. 1908, Brussels, Belgium, d. 2009, Paris.]
[Photography] remains servile to a “thoughtless” vision of the world… As the term snapshot suggests, photography seizes the moment and exhibits it.
Shirin Neshat
[Artist, photographer, and filmmaker, b. 1957, Qazvin, Iran, lives in New York.]
I find that through the study of women, you get to the heart—the truth—of the culture.
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)
David Maisel
[Photographer, b. 1961, New York, lives in San Francisco.]
My sense is that the places I photograph are an outer manifestation of our own psyches. These are not simply the work of some corporate enemy, but rather a reflection of who and what we are collectively, as a society.
Philippe Halsman
[Photographer, b. 1906, Riga, Latvia, d. 1979, New York.]
This fascination with the human face has never left me... Every face I see seems to hide and sometimes, fleetingly, to reveal the mystery of another human being... Capturing this revelation became the goal and passion of my life.
Richard Avedon
[Photographer, b. 1923, New York, d. 2004, San Antonio, Texas.]
Faces are the ledgers of our experience.
Allan Sekula
[Photographer, writer, and theorist, b. 1951, Erie, Pennsylvania, d. 2013, Los Angeles.]
Despite the powerful impression of reality (imparted by the mechanical registration of a moment of reflected light according to the rules of normal perspective), photographs, in themselves, are fragmentary and incomplete utterances.
Robert Doisneau
[Photographer, b. 1912, Gentilly, Val-de-Marne, France, d. 1994, Montrouge, France.]
You’ve got to struggle against the pollution of intelligence in order to become an animal with very sharp instincts—a sort of intuitive medium—so that to photograph becomes a magical act, and slowly other more suggestive images begin to appear behind the visible image, for which the photographer cannot be held responsible.
