George Orwell (Eric Arthur Blair)
[Writer, b. 1903, Motihari, Bengal, India, d. 1950, London.]
To see what is in front of one’s nose requires a constant struggle.
Theodore Roethke
[Poet, b. 1908, Saginaw, Michigan, d. 1963, Bainbridge Island, Washington.]
The eye, of course, is not enough. But the outer eye serves the inner eye, that’s the point.
Franz Kafka
[Writer, b. 1883, Prague, d. 1924, Prague.]
Your sight does not master the pictures, it is the pictures that master your sight.
Duane Michals
[Photographer, b. 1932, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]
I believe in the imagination. What I cannot see is infinitely more important than what I can see.
Paul Virilio
[Writer and theorist, b. 1932, Paris, lives in La Rochelle, France.]
[When everything becomes visible,] we’ll dream of being blind. This is the engine of art.
Josef Koudelka
[Photographer, b. 1938, Biskovice, Moravia, Czechoslovakia, lives in Paris.]
I never stay in one country more than three months. Why? Because I was interested in seeing, and if I stay longer I become blind.
Jeff Wall
[Photographer, b. 1946, Vancouver, Canada, lives in Vancouver.]
...electronic image traffic has become present in the relation between the photographer and the picture he or she sees in a viewfinder.
Franz Kafka
[Writer, b. 1883, Prague, d. 1924, Prague.]
Photography concentrates one’s eye on the superficial. For that reason it obscures the hidden life which glimmers through the outlines of things like a play of light and shade. One can’t catch that even with the sharpest lens. One has to grope for it by feeling.
