Sabrina Harman
[U.S. military guard at Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq, b. 1978, Lorton, Virginia, lives in Virginia.]
On June 23 I saw my first dead body I took pictures! The other day I heard my first grenade go off. Fun!
(To her father, June 23, 2003, written from Abu Ghraib Prison, Iraq) 
Dennis Stock
[Photographer, b. 1928, New York, d. 2010, Sarasota, Florida.]
The similarity between Van Gogh, Haiku poetry, and good photography is the concern for mortality. That things are very fleeting, that there are people who are more sensitive to death than others. The threat of time is of great concern to them. And the camera is a very appropriate instrument for many.
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
All photographs are
memento mori. To take a photograph is to participate in another person’s (or thing’s) mortality, vulnerability, mutability.
Allen Ginsberg
[Poet and writer, b. 1926, Newark, New Jersey, d. 1997, New York.]
We are all exposed to the flash bulb of death.
Ludwig Wittgenstein
[Philosopher, b. 1889, Vienna, Austria, d. 1951, Cambridge, England.]
If, for example, you were to think more deeply about death, then it would be truly strange if, in so doing, you did not encounter new images...
Corinne Day
[Photographer, b. 1962, Ealing, West London, d. 2010, Denham, England.]
[My brain tumor] was like a bungee jump into hell, like falling and falling forever. It was terrifying, I gave Mark my camera, and told him, “Photograph everything.”
Donald McCullin
[Photographer, b. 1935, Finsbury Park, London, lives in Somerset, England.]
Sometimes it felt like I was carrying pieces of human flesh back home with me, not negatives. It’s as if you are carrying the suffering of the people you have photographed.
John Updike
[Writer, b. 1932, Shillington, Pennsylvania, d. 2009, Boston, Massachusetts.]
A photograph offers us a glimpse into the abyss of time.
