Clarence John Laughlin
[Photographer, b. 1905, Lake Charles, Louisiana, d. 1985, New Orleans, Louisiana.]
... I frequently attempt to show in my work, in various ways, the unreality of the “real” and the reality of the “unreal.” This may result, at times, in some disturbing effects. But art
should be disturbing; it should make us both think
and feel; it should infect the subconscious as well as the conscious mind; it should never allow complacency nor condone the
status quo.
Arthur Tress
[Photographer, b. 1940, Brooklyn, New York, lives in Cambria, California.]
The “gay” life is filled with as much cruelty and loneliness as the heterosexual life... I search into my dreams or desires and try to ask myself how these feelings can be made into concrete images... Are they really abnormal, or are they trying to tell us something we have repressed about ourselves, something we don’t want to see, something about the darker side of the human condition itself?
Annette Kuhn
[Writer and theorist, lives in Lancaster, England.]
A photograph can certainly throw you off the scent. You will get nowhere, for instance, by taking a magnifying glass to it to get a closer look: you will see only patches of light and dark, an unreadable mesh of grains. The image yields nothing to that sort of scrutiny; it simply disappears. In order to show what it is evidence of, a photograph must always point you away from itself.
Christian Boltanski
[Artist, b. 1944, Paris, lives in Paris.]
I try to find images that are sufficiently imprecise to be as widely shared as possible, vague images that spectators can embroider as they see fit.
Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)
[Writer, photographer, mathematician, and logician, b. 1832, Daresbury, Cheshire, England, d. 1898, Guildford, Surrey, England.]
“And what is the use of a book,” thought Alice, “without pictures or conversations?”
Diane Arbus
[Photographer, b. 1923, New York, d. 1971, New York.]
There’s a quality of legend about freaks. Like a person in a fairy tale who stops you and demands that you answer a riddle.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]
“Manufactured” or staged photography does not concern me. And if I make a judgment, it can only be on a psychological or sociological level. There are those who take photographs arranged beforehand and those who go out to discover the image and seize it. For me, the camera is a sketch book, an instrument of intuition and spontaneity, the master of the instant which—in visual terms—questions and decides simultaneously.
Frank Gohlke
[Photographer, b. 1942, Wichita Falls, Texas, lives in Southborough, Massachusetts.]
When a photographer chooses a subject, he or she is making a claim on the interest and attention of future viewers, a prediction about what will be thought to have been important.
