Dieter Appelt
[Photographer and artist, b. 1935, Niemegk, Germany, lives in Berlin.]

 A snapshot steals life that it cannot return. A long exposure gives a form that never existed. 

Barbara Kruger
[Artist, b. 1945, Newark, New Jersey, lives in New York.]

 I worked with someone else’s photos; I cropped them in whatever way I wanted and put words on top of them. I knew how to do it with my eyes closed. Why couldn’t that be my art? 

Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]

 The photographer both loots and preserves, denounces and consecrates. 

Robert Rauschenberg
[Artist, b. 1925, Port Arthur, Texas, d. 2008, Captiva Island, Florida.]

 The reason that I started using found photographs early on was because I couldn’t go everywhere. And now I’ve worked my life in such a way that I’ve already nearly been everywhere, so I don’t have to have a secondhand viewpoint. 

Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]

 A photographer is part pick-pocket and part tightrope dancer. 

Brassaï (Gyula Halász)
[Photographer, b. 1889, Brassó, Transylvania, Hungary (now Romania), d. 1984, Eze, Alpes-Maritimes, France.]

 ... we photographers are nothing but a pack of crooks, thieves and voyeurs. We are to be found everywhere we are not wanted; we betray secrets that were never entrusted to us; we spy shamelessly on things that are not our business; And end up the hoarders of a vast quantity of stolen goods. 

John Szarkowski
[Curator, critic, historian, and photographer, b. 1925, Ashland, Wisconsin, d. 2007, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.]

 An artist is a man who seeks new structures in which to order and simplify his sense of the reality of life. For the artist photographer, much of his sense of reality (where the pictures start) and much of his sense of craft (where the picture is completed) are anonymous and untraceable gifts from photography itself. 

Richard Prince
[Artist, b. 1949, Panama Canal Zone, lives in New York.]

 ... maybe re-photographing a picture is like fucking a picture. There is something sexual about standing behind a camera and staring at another picture. It’s hard to explain. It’s like you’ve captured it. Even before you’ve taken it. Before you press the shutter. 
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