Douglas McCulloh
[Photographer, b. 1959, Los Angeles, lives in Los Angeles.]
Images are the currency of our age, but it’s a toss-up whether we live in a time of abundance or debasement.
Philip Jones Griffiths
[Photojournalist, b. 1936, Rhuddian, Wales, d. 2008, London.]
Today, the photographer is sent off to illustrate the preconceptions, usually misconceptions, of the desk-bound editor—an editor biased not by any knowledge of the subject but by the pressure to conform to the standard view ordained by the powers that be. Any deviation from the ‘party line’ is rejected. We are probably the last generation that will accept the integrity of the photograph.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]
As far as I am concerned, taking photographs is a means of understanding which cannot be separated from other means of visual expression. It is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one’s own originality. It is a way of life.
Tina Modotti
[Photographer and political activist, b. 1896, Undine, Italy, d. 1942, Mexico City.]
I cannot, as you [Edward Weston] once proposed to me—“solve the problem of life by losing myself in the problem of art”... in my case, life is always struggling to predominate and art naturally suffers.
Edouard Boubat
[Photographer, b. 1923, Paris, France, d. 1999, Paris.]
Nowadays, photographers start out with ideas, and their photos become the expression of an idea. To my way of thinking, a photo should not depend on ideas, should go beyond ideas.
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
... the very question of whether photography is or is not an art is essentially a misleading one. Although photography generates works that can be called art—it requires subjectivity, it can lie, it gives aesthetic pleasure—photography is not, to begin with, an art form at all. Like language, it is a medium in which works of art (among other things) are made.
Harry Callahan
[Photographer, b. 1912, Detroit, Michigan, d. 1999, Atlanta, Georgia.]
I sort of believe [previsualization] is untrue. I mean, are [Ansel Adams and the others] previsualizing a masterpiece, or a perfect print, or what? If I knew every picture I made was going to be a real picture, maybe I could go along with that, but I can’t.
Karl Blossfeldt
[Photographer, b. 1865, Schielo, Germany, d. 1932, Berlin.]
If I give someone a horsetail he will have no difficulty making a photographic enlargement of it—anyone can do that. But to observe it, to notice and discover its forms, is something that only a few are capable of.
