Michael Heizer
[Artist, b. 1944, Berkeley, California, lives in Hiko, Nevada.]
I have looked at so many photographs, I can not see them anymore.
Sophie Ristelhueber
[Photographer, b. 1949, Paris, lives in Paris.]
We have at our disposal modern techniques for seeing everything, apprehending everything,
yet we see nothing.
Paul Valéry
[Writer and poet, b. 1871, Sète, France, d. 1945, Paris.]
Thanks to photography, the eye grew accustomed to anticipate what it should see and to see it; and it learned not to see nonexistent things which, hitherto, it had seen so clearly.
Diane Arbus
[Photographer, b. 1923, New York, d. 1971, New York.]
I really believe there are things nobody would see if I didn’t photograph them.
Franz Kafka
[Writer, b. 1883, Prague, d. 1924, Prague.]
Your sight does not master the pictures, it is the pictures that master your sight.
Bernard-Henri Lévy
[Writer and critic, b. 1948, Béni Saf, Algeria, lives in St-Paul-de-Vence, France.]
No one wants to see; no one wants to hear. We have to force them to see it, then. There has to be a terrorism of the gaze.
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.
Ruth Bernhard
[Photographer, b. 1905, Berlin, d. 2006, San Francisco.]
If you are not willing to see more than is visible, you won’t see anything.
