Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]
Time runs and flows and only our death succeeds in catching up with it. Photography is a blade which, in eternity, impales the dazzling moment.
Ron Galella
[Photographer, b. 1931, Bronx, New York, lives in New York.]
My job is thick with risks, threats, occasional violence and sometimes the necessary folly that sometimes courts humiliation and ridicule. But I don’t care. I see myself as the dean of American paparazzi.
Rainer Maria Rilke
[Writer and poet, b. 1875, Prague, d. 1926, Montreux, Switzerland.]
Oh quickly disappearing photograph
in my more slowly disappearing hand.
Francis Wey
[Writer, member de la Société héliographique, b. 1812, Switzerland, d. 1882, Paris.]
[Photography] is the seed of a revolution against the system of stencillers, to the benefit of reality... it would seem already that the public, more desirous of the truth, is growing less demanding in terms of preconceived ideas of style and beauty, and displaying curiosity toward the cult of the real.
(1851)
Malcolm Muggeridge
[Writer and media personality, b. 1903, Sanderstead, England, d. 1990, Robertsbridge, England.]
The three most disastrous inventions of our time have been the birth control pill, the camera and nuclear weaponry. The first offers sex in terms of sterility, the second reality in terms of fantasy, and the third security in terms of destruction.
David Wojnarowicz
[Artist and activist, b. 1954, Redbank, New Jersey, d. 1990, New York.]
I am all emptiness and futility. I am an empty stranger, a carbon copy of my form. I can no longer find what I’m looking for outside of myself. It doesn’t exist out there. Maybe it’s only in here, inside my head. But my head is glass and my eyes have stopped being cameras, the tape has run out and nobody’s words can touch me.
Herman Melville
[Writer, b. 1819, New York, d. 1891, New York.]
With what infinite readiness now, the most faithful portrait of any one could be taken by the Daguerreotype, whereas in former times a faithful portrait was only within the power of the moneyed, or mental aristocrats of the earth. How natural then the inference, that instead of, as in old time, immortalizing a genius, a portrait now only dayalzed a dunce. Besides when every body has his portrait published, true distinction lies in not having yours published at all. For if you are published along with Tom, Dick, and Harry, and wear a coat of their cut, how are you distinct from Tom, Dick, and Harry?
Douglas Huebler
[Photographer and artist, b. 1924, Ann Arbor, Michigan, d. 1997, Truro, Massachusetts.]
The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.
