George Bernard Shaw
[Writer, critic, and dramatist, b. 1856, Dublin, d. 1950, Ayot St. Lawrence, Hertfordshire, England.]
I would willingly exchange every single painting of Christ for one snapshot.
Ed Ruscha
[Artist, b. 1937, Omaha, Nebraska, lives in Los Angeles.]
Unfortunately, there was no Jackson Pollock of the camera.
Laszlo Moholy-Nagy
[Artist, photographer, designer, and teacher, b. 1895, Bacsbarsod, Hungary, d. 1946, Chicago, Illinois.]
The invention of photography destroyed the canons of representational, imitative art.
Gerhard Richter
[Artist, b. 1932, Dresden, lives in Düsseldorf.]
The photograph is the only picture that can truly convey information, even if it is technically faulty and the object can barely be identified. A painting of a murder is of no interest whatever; but a photograph of a murder fascinates everyone.
Ezra Pound
[Poet, b. 1885, Hailey, Idaho, d. 1972, Venice, Italy.]
Almost any fool can paint an academy picture, and any imbecile can shoot off a Kodak.
Man Ray (Emanuel Radnitsky)
[Artist, b. 1890, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, d. 1976, Paris.]
However rapidly I could paint, it was still drudgery after the instantaneous act of photography.
John Szarkowski
[Curator, critic, historian, and photographer, b. 1925, Ashland, Wisconsin, d. 2007, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.]
The invention of photography provided a radically new picture-making process—a process based not in synthesis but on selection. The difference was a basic one. Paintings were
made... but photographs, as the man on the street puts it, were
taken.
Marcel Duchamp
[Artist, b. 1887, Blainville, France, d. 1968, Neilly-sur-Seine, France.]
You know exactly what I think of photography. I would like to see it make people despise painting until something else will make photography unbearable.
(In a letter to Alfred Stieglitz)
