Robbert Flick
[Photographer, b. 1939, Amersfoort, Holland, lives in Los Angeles, California.]
Serendipity plays an enormous role in my work. I create the possibilities for accidents to happen.
Joe Rosenthal
[Photographer, b. 1911, Washington, D.C., d. 2006, Novato, California.]
I swung my camera around and held it until I could guess that this was the peak of the action, and shot. I couldn’t positively say I had the picture. It’s something like shooting a football play; you don’t brag until it’s developed.
(On his photograph of U.S. Marines raising the American flag on Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima.)
Janet Malcolm
[Writer, b. 1934, Prague, Czechoslovakia, lives in New York.]
The heavy odds against finding the desired… work of art in the mess and flux of life, as opposed to the serene orderliness of imagined reality, give a special tense dazzle and an atmosphere of tour de force to any photographs that succeed in the search.
Chuck Close
[Artist, b. 1940, Monroe, Washington, lives in New York.]
The thing that interests me about photography, and why it’s different from all other media, is that it’s the only medium in which there is even the possibility of an accidental masterpiece.
Larry Sultan
[Photographer, b. 1946, Brooklyn, New York, d. 2009, Greenbrae, California.]
I always thought of a great photograph as if some creature walked into my room; it’s like, how did you get here? What are you made of? And no matter how many pictures I make, I have never depleted that quality of mystery.
Sally Mann
[Photographer, b. 1951, Lexington, Virginia, lives in Lexington.]
Stop trying to get it right. Just take the picture.
Boris Mikhailov
[Photographer, b. 1938, Kharkov, Ukraine, lives in Kharkov and Berlin.]
Photographic accident may be more interesting than a consciously constructed collage.
Garry Winogrand
[Photographer, b. 1928, New York, d. 1984, Tijuana, Mexico.]
You know why your pictures are no fucking good? Because they don’t describe the chaos of life.
(Quoted by Philip-Lorca DiCorcia)
