Pete Turner
[Photographer, b. 1934, Albany, New York, d. 2017, Long Island, New York.]
What have I done wrong? Nothing, I think. I am steadily surprised that there are so many photographers that reject manipulating reality, as if that was wrong. Change reality! If you don't find it, invent it!
Duane Michals
[Photographer, b. 1932, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]
I’m always working on something. I’m not a photographer the moment I pick up the camera. When I pick one up, the hard work’s already been done. The hard part for me is what do I think, what do I care enough about for me to do a photograph?
Paul Outerbridge
[Photographer, b. 1896, New York, d. 1958, Laguna Beach, California.]
Now, whereas we do not find it hard to accept the beauty of a flower for itself alone, in present-day, mechanical-industrial civilization, people will usually question the use of a picture. Things are estimated much more for what they do or will do than for what they are or will become... .
Pablo Picasso
[Artist, b. 1881, Málaga, Spain, d. 1973, Mougin, France.]
Photography has arrived at the point where it is capable of liberating painting from all literature, from the anecdote, and even from the subject. In any case, a certain aspect of the subject now belongs to the domain of photography. So shouldn’t painters profit from their newly acquired liberty, and make use of it to do other things?
Stephen Shore
[Photographer, b. 1947, New York, lives in New York.]
A photographer may have questions and problems that he or she brings to a picture-making situation. At the same time, the specific situation can generate new ideas, possibilities, and problems.
Raymond Carver
[Writer, b. 1938, Clatskanie, Oregon, d. 1988, Port Angeles, Washington.]
You want this picture or not?
Lise Sarfati
[Photographer, b. 1958, Oran, Algeria, lives in Paris.]
I am interested in marginality, in immaturity, in naïveté, in illusion, in fictions, in transitions, in the fact that at a certain moment in life there is no limit. I would like my photography to pose a question rather than make a precise statement.
Allen Ginsberg
[Poet and writer, b. 1926, Newark, New Jersey, d. 1997, New York.]
What would I want to know if I were looking at a photograph of Rimbaud and Verlaine together? What were they doing that day? What had they been talking about? What were they occupied with? Where was it?
(On writing captions)
