Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
The camera doesn’t rape, or even possess, though it may presume, intrude, trespass, distort, exploit, and, at the farthest reach of metaphor, assassinate—all activities that, unlike the sexual push and shove, can be conducted from a distance, and with some detachment.
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.
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.
Roland Barthes
[Writer, critic, and theorist, b. 1915, Cherbourg, d. 1980, Paris.]
Pornography ordinarily represents the sex-organ, it makes it into an immobile object (a fetish), to which we burn incense, like a god that doesn’t leave its niche.
Anaïs Nin
[Writer, b. 1903, Neuilly, France, d. 1977, Los Angeles.]
I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy.
Roland Barthes
[Writer, critic, and theorist, b. 1915, Cherbourg, d. 1980, Paris.]
[The pornographic photograph] is always a naive photograph, without intention and without calculation. Like a shop window which shows only one illuminated piece of jewelry, it is completely constituted by the presentation of only one thing: sex…
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.)
Nobuyoshi Araki
[Photographer, b. 1940, Tokyo, lives in Tokyo.]
I would say my sex drive is weaker than most. However, my lens has a permanent erection.
