Minor White
[Photographer, writer, and theorist, b. 1908, Minneapolis, Minnesota, d. 1976, Cambridge, Massachusetts.]

 The secret, the catch, and power lies in being able to use the forms and shapes of objects in front of the camera for their expressive-evocative qualities... the ability to see the visual world as the plastic material for the photographer’s expressive purposes. 

Ralph Gibson
[Photographer, b. 1939, Los Angeles, California, lives in New York.]

 It occurs to me that at the beginning one works passionately to learn photography. This takes years, and the craft is usually formed during this period. Then as time passes one finds oneself more in the role of serving the medium... Then, as in the example of several masters that I have been privileged to know personally, it appears that by having devoted oneself totally to the medium, one becomes photography. 

Vik Muniz
[Artist, b. 1961, Sao Paulo, Brazil, lives in New York.]

 My first reaction to finding Robert Smithson’s Spiral Jetty in a book was, “Wow, what a great photograph!” I could not believe that someone had gone to so much trouble just to end up with a picture. 

Robert Adams
[Photographer and writer, b. 1937, Orange, New Jersey, lives in Astoria, Oregon.]

 Mainly, you photograph because it’s fun. It’s serious too, but that’s the other side of fun. 

Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]

 As far as I am concerned, taking photographs is a means of understanding which cannot be separated from other means of visual expression. It is a way of shouting, of freeing oneself, not of proving or asserting one’s own originality. It is a way of life. 

Anthony Aziz, Sammy Cucher

 Through developments in digital technology, photography has been freed once and for all from the rigid conventions of Realism. Like life itself, it is not capable of representing not just what is real, but what is possible. 

Paul Strand
[Photographer, b. 1890, New York, d. 1976, Oregeval, France.]

 The unintelligence of present-day photographers, that is of so-called pictorial photographers, lies in the fact that they have not discovered the basic qualities of their medium. 

Walter Lippmann
[Writer and journalist, b. 1889, New York, d. 1974, New York.]

 I haven’t the least doubt about the significance of the best modern photography… It is clear that the men who are doing it feel its significance, and that is all that is necessary. (1922) 
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