Andres Serrano
[Artist, b. 1950, New York, lives in New York.]
There’s nothing wrong with provocative art work: I even look forward to the day when I can take pictures which will disturb even me.
Weegee (Usher Fellig)
[Photographer, b. 1899, Zlothew near Lemberg, Austrian Galicia (now Zolochiv, Ukraine), d. 1968, New York.]
The same camera that photographs a murder scene can photograph a beautiful society affair at a big hotel.
William Garnett
[Photographer, b. 1916, Chicago, d. 2006, Napa, California.]
To show people the ugly doesn’t accomplish much. I came to the conclusion that I can’t really make much of a change in society’s attitude towards land use by just showing them what’s wrong. I’ve come to the conclusion you have to show them what’s right, and inspire them.
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
In photographing dwarfs, you don’t get majesty and beauty. You get dwarfs.
(On photographs by Diane Arbus)
Hilla Becher
[Photographer, b. 1934, Potsdam, d. 2015, Düsseldorf.]
Someone who concerns himself with scorpions must love them to a certain extent. And photography is there precisely to portray what is, not to sort and reproduce only the good and the beautiful.
Daido Moriyama
[Photographer, b. 1938, Ikeda-cho, Osaka, Japan, lives in Tokyo.]
Until a few years ago, I was able to stave off an awareness that there is not an ounce of beauty in the world, and that humanity is a thing of extreme hideousness. So I could shoot and believe in something.
(1972)
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
Photographs can and do distress, but the aestheticizing tendency of photography is such that the medium which conveys distress ends by neutralizing it.
Wim Wenders
[Artist and filmmaker, b. 1945, Düsseldorf, lives in Berlin.]
The beautiful image today means nothing. It’s worth shit. In fact, it’s almost as if it has the opposite effect, because you’re just like everything else out there.
