John Szarkowski
[Curator, critic, historian, and photographer, b. 1925, Ashland, Wisconsin, d. 2007, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.]
Photography is a contest between a photographer and the presumptions of approximate and habitual seeing. The contest can be held anywhere...
Wynn Bullock
[Photographer, b. 1902, Chicago, Illinois, d. 1975, Monterey, California.]
The medium of photography can record not only what the eyes see, but that which the mind’s eye sees as well. The camera is not only an extension of the eye, but of the brain. It can see sharper, farther, nearer, slower, faster than the eye. It can see by invisible light. It can see in the past, present, and future. Instead of using the camera only to reproduce objects, I wanted to use it to make what is invisible to the eye, visible.
Penelope Umbrico
[Photographer, b. 1957, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]
I am not interested in producing work that shows how I see, in that literal manner that photographs can confirm.
Rineke Dijkstra
[Photographer, b. 1959, Sittard, The Netherlands, lives in Amsterdam.]
For me, the importance of photography is that you can point to something, that you can let other people see things. Ultimately, it is a matter of the specialness of the ordinary.
Gilles Peress
[Photographer, b. 1946, Neuilly, France, lives in New York.]
I’m proposing to you that photography is a language on its own, which is that when you look at images you do derive ideas; and I’m also proposing to you that you can derive ideas without going through words. So I’m forcing you to really look. And this process of looking, it’s like a new set of ideas that are being proposed to you.
Duane Michals
[Photographer, b. 1932, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]
I don’t believe in the eyes, I believe in the mind... I’m not interested in what things look like.
Lewis Mumford
[Writer and critic, b. 1895, Flushing, New York, d. 1990, New York.]
It was Stieglitz’s endeavor... to translate the unseen world of tactile values as they develop between lovers not merely into the sexual act but the entire relation of two personalities—to translate this world of blind touch into sight.
Paul Strand
[Photographer, b. 1890, New York, d. 1976, Oregeval, France.]
Thoreau said years ago, “You can’t say more than you see.” No matter what lens you use, no matter what the speed of the film is, no matter how you develop it, no matter how you print it, you cannot say more than you see.
