Dmitri Baltermants
[Photographer, b. 1912, Warsaw, Poland, d. 1990, Moscow.]
We photographers make magnificent shots of wars, fires, earthquakes, and murder: the grief of humanity. We would like to see photographs about joy, happiness and love, but on the same level of quality. I realize, though, that this is difficult.
Philippe Halsman
[Photographer, b. 1906, Riga, Latvia, d. 1979, New York.]
I assure you that often, before approaching the person, my heart would beat, and I would have to fight down all my inhibitions in order to address this request to my subject. At every time when the subject agreed to jump, it was for me like a kind of victory.
Alfred Stieglitz
[Photographer and curator, b. 1864, Hoboken, New Jersey, d. 1946, New York.]
The great geniuses are those who have kept their childlike spirit and have added to it breadth of vision and experience.
James Nachtwey
[Photographer, b. 1948, Syracuse, New York, lives in New York.]
I want my work to become part of our visual history, to enter our collective memory and our collective conscience. I hope it will serve to remind us that history’s deepest tragedies concern not the great protagonists who set events in motion but the countless ordinary people who are caught up in those events and torn apart by their remorseless fury.
Robert Adams
[Photographer and writer, b. 1937, Orange, New Jersey, lives in Astoria, Oregon.]
Nothing is so clarifying… as to stand through the opening of an exhibition to which only officials have come. Experiences like that do encourage defiance, however. Why quit when you’re losing?
Norman Parkinson
[Photographer, b. 1913, London, d. 1990, Singapore.]
The camera can be the most deadly weapon since the assassin’s bullet. Or it can be the lotion of the heart.
Nan Goldin
[Photographer, b. 1953, Washington, D.C., lives in New York and Paris.]
Every time I go through something scary, traumatic, I survive by taking pictures.
Beaumont Newhall
[Photographer, writer, and historian, b. 1908, Lynn, Massachusetts, d. 1993, Santa Fe, New Mexico.]
Wherever there is disaster, the newsman is there. If he cannot find disaster, he searches for the odd and the peculiar, the exotic and the unfamiliar. His photographs, seen by millions, make momentary events and strange occurrences all over the world our common property.
