Susie Bright
[Writer, feminist, and activist, b. 1958, Arlington, Virginia, lives in Santa Cruz, California.]
Seeing lesbian photography is just the tip of my radicalized clitoris. I have modeled for, commissioned, published, and fought for these pictures, and answered threats against them. I’ve seen the feminist movement bring these pictures to life, and I’ve seen that same movement try to suppress the liberating results.
Philippe Halsman
[Photographer, b. 1906, Riga, Latvia, d. 1979, New York.]
I drifted into photography like one drifts into prostitution. First I did it to please myself, then I did it to please my friends, and eventually I did it for money.
Charles Baudelaire
[Writer, b. 1821, Paris, d. 1867, Paris.]
... a thousand hungry eyes are bending over the peepholes of the stereoscope as though they were the attic windows of the infinite. The love of pornography, which is no less deep-rooted in the natural heart of man than the love of himself, was not to let slip so fine an opportunity of satisfaction [as photography]. And do not imagine that it was only children on their way back from school who took pleasure in these follies; everyone was infatuated with them.
(1859)
Helmut Newton
[Photographer, b. 1920, Berlin, d. 2004, Los Angeles.]
Of course I love women. Or else I wouldn’t have spent so much time photographing them and I would be homosexual.
Edward Weston
[Photographer, b. 1886, Highland Park, Illinois, d. 1958, Wildcat Hill, California.]
By all means tell your Board that pubic hair has definitely been part of my development as an artist, tell them it has been the most important part, that I like it black, brown, red or golden, curly or straight, all sizes and shapes.
(To Museum of Modern Art curator Beaumont Newhall, after being told the museum was reluctant to show nudes revealing pubic hair.)
Chuck Close
[Artist, b. 1940, Monroe, Washington, lives in New York.]
No one makes a nude if they’re not going to get turned on, and if they claim that they are making it for other reasons it’s an absolute lie.
Nobuyoshi Araki
[Photographer, b. 1940, Tokyo, lives in Tokyo.]
In the act of love, as in photography, there is a form of life and a kind of slow death.
Marilyn Monroe (Norma Jeane Mortenson)
[Actress, b. 1926, Los Angeles, d. 1962, Los Angeles.]
It’s like being screwed by a thousand guys and you can’t get pregnant.
(On what happens between her and still cameras, to photographer Ernst Cunningham.)
