Joan Fontcuberta
[Photographer, b. 1955, Barcelona, lives in Barcelona.]
The heart [of my work], the quintessential, remains the questioning of photographic truth. Be careful, be critical, doubt, and filter the information you receive.
Phil Stern
[Photographer, b. 1919, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, d. 2014, Los Angeles.]
What is a photographer? Some dumb-fucking, uneducated, illiterate schmuck.
Tristan Tzara (Sami Rosenstock)
[Writer and artist, b. 1896, Moineti, Bacu, Romania, d. 1963, Paris.]
Is it a spiral of water in the tragic gleam of a revolver, an egg, a glistening arc or the floodgate of reason, a keen ear attuned to a mineral hiss, or a turbine of algebraic formulas?
(On Man Ray’s first photograms, 1921.)
Nikki S. Lee
[Photographer, b. 1970, Kye-Chang, Korea, lives in New York.]
What does it mean to go deeper? Taking pictures when you’re more emotional or sorrowful, or having sex? I just want to have really boring snapshots—people just standing in front of a camera taking pictures with a smile.
Susie Linfield
[Writer and critic, New York, lives in New York.]
...we’re still not at all sure what photography is: is it news, art, entertainment, documentation, science, or surveillance? It tends to blur all those boundaries, which is exciting, but also bewildering and confusing.
Platon (Platon Rivellis)
[Photographer, b. 1968, London, lives in New York.]
Mr. President, can you show me the love?
(Direction to Bill Clinton resulting an infamous low-angled “crotch-shot” Esquire magazine cover.)
Roger Ballen
[Photographer, b. 1950, New York, lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.]
When you push the shutter and take a photo you are a photographer, but are you an artist?
Robert Doisneau
[Photographer, b. 1912, Gentilly, Val-de-Marne, France, d. 1994, Montrouge, France.]
If you take photos, don’t speak, don’t write, don’t analyze yourself, and don’t answer any questions.
