Miroslav Tichý
[Photographer, b. 1926, N?t?ice, Czechoslovakia, d. 2011, Kyjov, Czech Republic.]
If you want to be famous, you have to do whatever you’re doing worse than anyone else in the whole world.
Robert Smithson
[Artist, b. 1938, Rutherford, New Jersey, d. 1973, Amarillo, Texas.]
A camera is wild in just about anybody’s hands, therefore one must set limits. But cameras have a life of their own. Cameras care nothing about cults or isms. They are indifferent mechanical eyes, ready to devour anything in sight. They are lenses of the unlimited reproduction.
Thomas Demand
[Photographer, b. 1964, Munich, Germany, lives in Los Angeles.]
I think that nowadays there are more images in the world than world to be in the pictures.
Roberta McGrath
[Critic, lives in Edinburgh, Scotland.]
“Taking” a photograph is a way of making sense of the world. It imposes and order, a unity on the world which is lacking. To take a photograph is to exercise an illusory control, a mastery which is characteristic of voyeurism. But the sexual connotations of the verb are also obvious: the slang for carnal knowledge. It implies a physical penetration of the other while the photograph is a penetration of the space of the other.
August Sander
[Photographer, b. 1876, Herdorf, Germany, d. 1964, Cologne.]
Nothing is more abhorrent to me than sugary-sweet photography full of pretense, poses, and gimmickry. For this reason, I have allowed myself to tell the truth about our times and people in a sincere manner.
Philippe Halsman
[Photographer, b. 1906, Riga, Latvia, d. 1979, New York.]
I drifted into photography like one drifts into prostitution. First I did it to please myself, then I did it to please my friends, and eventually I did it for money.
Larry Clark
[Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1943, Tulsa, Oklahoma, lives in New York.]
I always wished I could be a painter or a filmmaker, anything but a fucking photographer. I certainly didn’t want to be in a photography gallery.
Juergen Teller
[Photographer, b. 1964, Erlangen, Germany, lives in London.]
You develop more confidence within the world, as a human being, about taking risks. And on one level not taking things so seriously, and then again, taking things so seriously that you can allow yourself to have fun with it. I have that chance of making that fucking space my own—let’s go in there and piss in the corner if it feels great.
