Man Ray (Emanuel Radnitsky)
[Artist, b. 1890, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, d. 1976, Paris.]
Speaking of nudes, I have always had a great fondness for this subject, both in my paintings and in my photos, and I must admit, not for purely artistic reasons.
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.
Pipilotti Rist
[Artist, b. 1962, Reinthal, Switzerland, lives in Zurich and Los Angeles.]
Women are less interested in watching two people having sex than in understanding how and what these people are feeling when they are having sex. If you kiss someone, you want to know what the other person is feeling. So I want to find pictures that express what the other feels.
Nan Goldin
[Photographer, b. 1953, Washington, D.C., lives in New York and Paris.]
… I wrote myself in as the lover. Sometimes, the obsession lasted for years. It was photography as the sublimation of sex, a means of seduction, and a way to remain a crucial part of my subjects’ lives. A chance to touch someone with a camera rather than physically.
Philip Jones Griffiths
[Photojournalist, b. 1936, Rhuddian, Wales, d. 2008, London.]
The only thing we photographers really want more than life, more than sex, more than anything, is to be invisible.
Mario Sorrenti
[Photographer, b. 1971, Naples, Italy, lives in New York.]
Now I love the act of creating a new image. When everything comes together, it feels like ecstasy. It’s like a climax.
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…
Georgia O'Keeffe
[Artist, b. 1887, Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, d. 1986, Santa Fe, New Mexico.]
We’d make love. Afterwards he would take photographs of me.
(On modeling for Alfred Stieglitz)
