Minor White
[Photographer, writer, and theorist, b. 1908, Minneapolis, Minnesota, d. 1976, Cambridge, Massachusetts.]

 I seek out places where it can happen more readily, such as deserts or mountains or solitary areas, or by myself with a seashell, and while I’m there get into states of mind where I’m more open than usual. I’m waiting, I’m listening. I go to those places and get myself ready through meditation. Through being quiet and willing to wait, I can begin to see the inner man and the essence of the subject in front of me... Watching the way the current moves a blade of grass—sometimes I’ve seen that happen and it has just turned me inside out. 

Graciela Iturbide
[Photographer, b. 1942, Mexico City, lives in Coyoacán, Mexico.]

 Wherever we go we want to find the theme we carry inside ourselves. 

Juergen Teller
[Photographer, b. 1964, Erlangen, Germany, lives in London.]

 Everything in a wide sense is a kind of a self-portrait. It’s just the way you see things and you’re curious about certain things and just excited about them. 

James Nachtwey
[Photographer, b. 1948, Syracuse, New York, lives in New York.]

 I don’t believe there’s any such thing as objective reality. It’s only reality as we experience it. And whatever emotions I’m feeling, for whatever reason I’m feeling them, get channeled into my work. If I’m feeling outraged, grief, disbelief, frustration, sympathy, that gets channeled through me and into my pictures and hopefully transmitted to the viewer. 

Christian Boltanski
[Artist, b. 1944, Paris, lives in Paris.]

 Everyone recognizes themselves in the photo album. 

Germaine Krull
[Photographer, b. 1897, Wilda, East Prussia, Germany (now Poland), d. 1985, Wetzlar, Germany.]

 The camera need not invent, manipulate or fool. It does not paint, nor does it imagine. The photographer is a witness, the witness of his time. 

Wendy Ewald
[Photographer and educator, b. 1951, Detroit, Michigan, lives in Rhinebeck, New York.]

 Gradually I saw that it was less interesting for me, as an artist, to frame the world wholly according to my own perceptions. I wanted instead to create situations in which I allowed others’ perceptions to surface with my own. 

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

 Museums have a wonderful function, but there comes a time when the artist had better stay out of them, I think. 
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