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.
Anaïs Nin
[Writer, b. 1903, Neuilly, France, d. 1977, Los Angeles.]
We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.
Manuel Álvarez Bravo
[Photographer, b. 1902, Mexico City, d. 2002, Mexico City.]
A photographer’s main instrument is his eyes. Strange as it may seem, many photographers choose to use the eyes of another photographer, past or present, instead of their own. Those photographers are blind.
Walker Evans
[Photographer, b. 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1975, New Haven, Connecticut.]
I work rather blindly. I have a theory that seems to work with me that some of the best things you ever do sort of come through you. You don’t know where you get the impetus and response to what’s before your eyes.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
[Poet, novelist, playwright, and natural philosopher, b. 1749, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, d. 1832, Weimar, Germany.]
The hardest thing to see is what is in front of your eyes.
(Maxim often quoted by Albert Renger-Patzsch.)
Judith Butler
[Philosopher and theorist, b. 1956, Cleveland, Ohio, lives in Berkeley, California.]
The critical image... must not only fail to capture its referent, but show its failure.
Dorothea Lange
[Photographer, b. 1895, Hoboken, New Jersey, d. 1965, San Francisco.]
One should really use the camera as though tomorrow you’d be stricken blind. To live a visual life is an enormous undertaking, practically unattainable. I have only touched it, just touched it.
Emmet Gowin
[Photographer, b. 1941, Danville, Virginia, lives in Princeton, New Jersey.]
Photography is a tool for dealing with things everybody knows about but isn’t attending to. My photographs are intended to represent something you don’t see.
