William J. T. Mitchell
[Writer, theorist, and architect, b. 1944, Melbourne, Australia, lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
We can identify certain historical moments at which the sudden crystallization of a new technology (such as printing, photography, or computing) provides the nucleus for new forms of social and cultural practice and marks the beginning of a new era of artistic exploration. The end of the 1830s—the moment of Daguerre and Talbot—was one of these. And the opening of the 1990s will be remembered as another—the time at which the computer-processed digital image began to supersede the image fixed on silver-based photographic emulsion... . From the moment of its sesquicentennial in 1989 photography was dead—or, more precisely, radically and permanently displaced—as was painting 150 years before.
Walter Benjamin
[Philosopher, critic, and theorist, b. 1892, Berlin, d. 1940, Port Bou, France.]
One might generalize by saying: the technique of reproduction detaches the reproduced object from the domain of tradition. By making many reproductions it substitutes a plurality of copies for a unique existence. And in permitting the reproduction to meet the beholder or listener in his own particular situation, it reactivates the object reproduced. These two processes lead to a tremendous shattering of tradition which is the obverse of the contemporary crisis and renewal of mankind. Both processes are intimately connected with the contemporary mass movements...
Paul Strand
[Photographer, b. 1890, New York, d. 1976, Oregeval, France.]
Gums, oils, soft-focus lenses, these are the worst enemies, not of photography, which can vindicate itself easily and naturally, but of photographers. The whole photographic past and present, with few exceptions, has been weakened and sterilized by the use of these things.
(1923)
Gabriel Orozco
[Artist, b. 1962, Jalapa, Veracruz, Mexico, lives in New York, Paris, and Mexico City.]
I admire the artists that work everyday to attest things for themselves... In the act of transforming the objects of the everyday they transform the passage of time and analyze the economics and politics of the instruments of living.
Alfred Stieglitz
[Photographer and curator, b. 1864, Hoboken, New Jersey, d. 1946, New York.]
The placing in the hands of the general public a means of making pictures but with little labor and requiring less knowledge has of necessity been followed by the production of millions of photographs. It is due to this fatal facility that photography as a picture-making medium has fallen into disrepute.
(1899)
Larry Sultan
[Photographer, b. 1946, Brooklyn, New York, d. 2009, Greenbrae, California.]
I love making pictures, even if most of the results are lousy.
Judy Dater
[Photographer, b. 1941, Hollywood, lives in San Francisco.]
I’ve consciously tried to be provocative and disturbing.
Roger Ballen
[Photographer, b. 1950, New York, lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.]
Every time you push the button of the camera you create a new reality.
