Taryn Simon
[Photographer, b. 1975, New York, lives in New York.]
...photography’s history is bound to the mistake, to the accident.
Adrian Piper
[Artist, b. 1948, Harlem, New York, lives in Hyannis, Massachusetts.]
My work is an act of communication, and it’s important to me the way what I assert lands, and where it lands within someone who sees it. On the other hand, I also recognize fully and live by the principle that once the work leaves my studio, I cannot control the effects it has.
Phil Stern
[Photographer, b. 1919, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, d. 2014, Los Angeles.]
I’ve taken mountains and mountains of stuff, which I occasionally describe as mountains and mountains of shit. It so happens, there’s a little gem here and a little gem there. You dig out those gems.
Diane Arbus
[Photographer, b. 1923, New York, d. 1971, New York.]
The thing that’s important to know is that you never know. You’re always sort of feeling your way.
Rineke Dijkstra
[Photographer, b. 1959, Sittard, The Netherlands, lives in Amsterdam.]
It’s like Diane Arbus said, you are looking for the “gap between intention and effect.” People think that they present themselves one way, but they cannot help but show something else as well. It’s impossible to have
everything under control.
Douglas Huebler
[Photographer and artist, b. 1924, Ann Arbor, Michigan, d. 1997, Truro, Massachusetts.]
In the same sense that I don’t care about specific appearance I really don’t care about precise or exhaustive documentation. The documents prove nothing. They make the piece exist and I am interested in having that existence occur in as simple a way as possible.
Gore Vidal
[Writer, b. 1925, West Point, New York, lives in Ravello, Italy and Los Angeles.]
For half a century photography has been the “art form” of the untalented. Obviously some pictures are more satisfactory than others, but where is credit due? To the designer of the camera? To the finger on the button? To the law of averages?
Anton Corbijn
[Photographer, b. 1955, Strijen, Netherlands, lives in London.]
I feel the imperfection is much closer to how life is than perfection.
