Stephen Shore
[Photographer, b. 1947, New York, lives in New York.]
There’s something arbitrary about taking a picture. So I can stand at the edge of a highway and take one step forward and it can be a natural landscape untouched by man and I can take one step back and include a guardrail and change the meaning of the picture radically... I can take a picture of a person at one moment and make them look contemplative and photograph them two seconds later and make them look frivolous.
W. Eugene Smith
[Photographer, b. 1918, Wichita, Kansas, d. 1978, Tucson, Arizona.]
Up to and including the instant of exposure, the photographer is working in an undeniably subjective way.
Robert Doisneau
[Photographer, b. 1912, Gentilly, Val-de-Marne, France, d. 1994, Montrouge, France.]
Photography is very subjective. Photography is not a document on which a report can be made. It is a subjective document. Photography is a false witness, a lie.
Arthur Tress
[Photographer, b. 1940, Brooklyn, New York, lives in Cambria, California.]
In my old age I no longer see the difference between documentary and staged.
(2012, age 71)
William Klein
[Photographer, b. 1928, New York, lives in Paris.]
Anybody who pretends to be objective isn’t realistic.
James Nachtwey
[Photographer, b. 1948, Syracuse, New York, lives in New York.]
The flow of reality has contours and dimensions much like the flow of a river. The characteristics of the current depend on the channel, whether it is a product of history or geology. Documentary photography has similar properties. The images I create are a confluence of what is in front of me and what is inside of me. They are objective and subjective at the same time, and they must be seen that way by the viewer in order to be convincing.
Jean François Millet
[Artist, b. 1814, Gruchy, France, d. 1875, Barbizon, France.]
A photograph is analogous to a plaster cast taken from life, which is always inferior to a good statue.
William Burroughs
[Writer, b. 1914, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1997, Lawrence, Kansas.]
Open your mind and let the pictures out.
