Walker Evans
[Photographer, b. 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1975, New Haven, Connecticut.]

 Leaving aside the mysteries and the inequities of human talent, brains, taste, and reputations, the matter of art in photography may come down to this: it is the capture and projection of the delights of seeing; it is the defining of observation full and felt. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

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. 

Oscar Wilde
[Writer, b. 1854, Dublin, d. 1900, Paris, France.]

 It is only the shallow people who do not judge by appearances. The mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible. 

Sherrie Levine
[Artist, b. 1947, Hazleton, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]

 Maybe I should see things as they really are and not as I want them to be. 

Wright Morris
[Writer and photographer, b. 1910, Central City, Nebraska, d. 1998, Mill Valley, California.]

 [We] make images to see clearly: then we see clearly what we have made. 
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