Chuck Close
[Artist, b. 1940, Monroe, Washington, lives in New York.]
It’s like a magic well. You think you know everything about [a] photograph, you think you've gotten everything out of it, and all of a sudden I see things in it I’d never seen before.
Barbara Ess
[Photographer, b. 1948, Brooklyn, New York, lives in New York.]
I try to photograph what can’t be photographed—psychological or subjective reality, which seems more real than physical or consensual reality.
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.
Robert Adams
[Photographer and writer, b. 1937, Orange, New Jersey, lives in Astoria, Oregon.]
The final strength in really great photographs is that they suggest more than just what they show literally.
Minor White
[Photographer, writer, and theorist, b. 1908, Minneapolis, Minnesota, d. 1976, Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
One should photograph objects, not only for what they are but for what else they are.
Richard Avedon
[Photographer, b. 1923, New York, d. 2004, San Antonio, Texas.]
My photographs don’t go below the surface. They don’t go below anything. They’re readings of what’s on the surface. I have great faith in surfaces. A good one is full of clues.
Jerry Uelsmann
[Photographer, b. 1934, Detroit, Michigan, lives in Gainesville, Florida.]
The goal of the artist is not to resolve life’s mysteries, but to deepen them.
Thomas Ruff
[Photographer, b. 1958, Zell, Germany, lives in Dusseldorf, Germany.]
I believe that photography can only reproduce the surface of things. The same applies to a portrait. I take photographs of people the same way I would take photographs of a plaster bust.
