Rankin (John Rankin Waddell)
[Photographer, b. 1966, Glasgow, Scotland, lives in London.]
I use the technique of being cheeky or rude or asking [subjects] to do ridiculous things. For example, I might talk about my sex life, or their sex life… I might say, “I’m imagining you being fucked up the arse with a big black dildo.”
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.
Robert Mapplethorpe
[Photographer, b. 1946, Floral Park, Long Island, d. 1989, Boston, Massachusetts.]
When I have sex with someone I forget who I am. For a minute I even forget I’m human. It’s the same thing when I’m behind a camera. I forget I exist.
Ishiuchi Miyako
[Photographer, b. 1947, Gunma Prefecture, Japan, lives in Tokyo.]
…I have always thought that the darkroom is such a sexual place. Its smell is so strong. And if you do it with bare hands, it’s like you’re having sex. Photography has that quality; it engages the five senses. It possesses something like sexuality.
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.
Alfred Stieglitz
[Photographer and curator, b. 1864, Hoboken, New Jersey, d. 1946, New York.]
When I photograph I make love.
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.
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)
