Chester Higgins
[Photographer, b. 1946, Lexington, Kentucky, lives in Brooklyn, New York.]
The ancients honored the spirit in all things, a philosophy I apply to my image-making today.
Loretta Lux
[Photographer, b. 1969, Dresden, Germany, lives in Dublin, Ireland.]
[My subjects] look lost because that is how I see life. I think we are all a bit lost, lost in a world we can’t understand.
Richard Avedon
[Photographer, b. 1923, New York, d. 2004, San Antonio, Texas.]
I don’t really remember the day when I stood behind my camera with Henry Kissinger on the other side. I am sure he doesn’t remember it either. But this photograph is here now to prove that no amount of kindness on my part could make this photograph mean exactly what he—or even I—wanted it to mean. It’s a reminder of the wonder and terror that is a photograph.
Lewis Baltz
[Photographer, b. 1945, Newport Beach, California, d. 2014, Paris.]
I never did [understand L.A.], really: I always believed that God would destroy L.A. for its sins. Finally I realized that He had already destroyed it, and then left it around as a warning.
Howard Bingham
[Photographer and pal to Muhammad Ali, b. 1939, Jackson, Mississippi, d. 2016, Marina del Rey, California.]
I have had the greatest of all blessings because my eye and my camera became the world’s window to this magnificent life.
Robert Capa (Endre Ern? Friedmann)
[Photographer, b. 1913, Budapest, Hungary, d. 1954, Thai Binh, Vietnam.]
The [concentration camps] were swarming with photographers and every new picture of horror served only to diminish the total effect. Now, for a short day, everyone will see what happened to those poor devils in those camps; tomorrow, very few will care what happens to them in the future.
Milan Kundera
[Writer, b. 1929, Brno, Bohemia (now Czechoslovakia), lives in Paris.]
All previous crimes of the Russian empire had been committed under the cover of a discreet shadow. The deportation of a million Lithuanians, the murder of hundreds of thousands of Poles, the liquidation of the Crimean Tatars remain in our memory, but no photographic documentation exists; sooner or later they will therefore be proclaimed as fabrications.
Leni Riefenstahl
[Filmmaker and photographer, b. 1902, Berlin, Germany, d. 2003, Poecking, Germany.]
In 1934 people were crazy and there was great enthusiasm for Hitler. We had to try and find that with our camera.
