Manuel Álvarez Bravo
[Photographer, b. 1902, Mexico City, d. 2002, Mexico City.]
I think that light and shadow have exactly the same duality that exists between life and death.
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
Photographs state the innocence, the vulnerability of lives heading toward their own destruction, and this link between photography and death haunts all photographs of people.
John Updike
[Writer, b. 1932, Shillington, Pennsylvania, d. 2009, Boston, Massachusetts.]
A photograph offers us a glimpse into the abyss of time.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]
Time runs and flows and only our death succeeds in catching up with it. Photography is a blade which, in eternity, impales the dazzling moment.
Daido Moriyama
[Photographer, b. 1938, Ikeda-cho, Osaka, Japan, lives in Tokyo.]
Making a definitive declaration of intent or meaning kills the photograph.
Jean Cocteau
[Writer, poet, artist, and filmmaker, b. 1889, Maisons-Lafitte, France, d. 1963, Milly-la-Foret, France.]
The only way to kill death is through photography.
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...
Roland Barthes
[Writer, critic, and theorist, b. 1915, Cherbourg, d. 1980, Paris.]
...there is always a defeat of Time in [historical photographs]:
that is dead and
that is going to die. These two little girls looking at a primitive airplane above their village (they are dressed like my mother as a child, they are playing with hoops)—how alive they are! They have their whole lives before them; but also they are dead (today), they are then
already dead (yesterday).
