Jacques-Henri Lartigue
[Photographer, b. 1894, Courbevoie, France, d. 1986, Nice, France.]
Photography is a magic thing. A thing that has mysterious odors, a little strange and frightening, something one quickly grows to love.
Ralph Gibson
[Photographer, b. 1939, Los Angeles, California, lives in New York.]
I believe that the medium of photography prevails entirely as an act of faith in the souls of those who love and practice it. And so every photograph becomes another subtle variation on the theme of the medium itself.
Gordon Parks
[Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1912, Fort Scott, Kansas, d. 2006, New York.]
You know, the camera is not meant just to show misery. You can show beauty with it; you can do a lot of things. You can show—with a camera you can show things that you like about the universe, things you hate about the universe. It's capable of doing both. And I think that after nearly 85 years upon this planet that I have a right after working so hard at showing the desolation and the poverty, to show something beautiful as well. It’s all there, and you've only done half the job if you don’t do that.
Marcel Proust
[Writer, b. 1871, Auteuil, Paris, d. 1922, Paris.]
Pleasure in this respect is like photography. What we take, in the presence of the beloved object, is merely a negative, which we develop later, when we are back at home, and have once again found at our disposal that inner darkroom the entrance to which is barred to us so long as we are with other people.
Rankin (John Rankin Waddell)
[Photographer, b. 1966, Glasgow, Scotland, lives in London.]
I think if you don’t love people and aren’t fascinated by them, you’ll never succeed as a portrait photographer, because your pictures will look cold.
Sophia Loren (Sofia Villani Scicolone)
[Actress, b. 1934, Rome, lives in Geneva.]
[William] Klein has eyes like a knife. He is ruthless and outrageous but never mean—he is tender and funny and violent—and, I’m sure, really in love with our crazy Rome.
Inge Morath
[Photographer, b. 1923, Graz, Austria, d. 2002, New York.]
In my heart I like to remain an amateur, in the sense of being in love with what I’m doing, forever astonished again at the endless possibilities of seeing and using the camera as a recording tool.
Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)
[Writer, photographer, mathematician, and logician, b. 1832, Daresbury, Cheshire, England, d. 1898, Guildford, Surrey, England.]
They say that we Photographers are a blind race at best; that we learn to look at even the prettiest faces as so much light and shade; that we seldom admire, and never love. This is a delusion I long to break through—if only I could find a young lady to photograph, realizing my ideal of beauty—above all, if her name should be—(why is it, I wonder, that I dote on the name Amelia more than any other word in the English language?)—I feel sure that I could shake off this cold, philosophic lethargy.
(1860)
