Hans Haacke
[Artist, b. 1936, Cologne, Germany, lives in New York.]
Whenever the medium of photography is useful for a particular task, I use it. If another medium is more suitable I use that.
Nobuyoshi Araki
[Photographer, b. 1940, Tokyo, lives in Tokyo.]
I’ve been taking photographs since I came into this world. I was no sooner out of my mother’s womb, than I turned around and photographed her sex.
Bill Jay
[Photographer, writer, and curator, b. 1940, Maidenhead, England, d. 2009, Samara, Costa Rica.]
I think we can agree that any definition of fame would include such phrases as “popular acclaim,” “known far and wide,” “public estimation and regard,” “household name,” and similar tributes. Now lay back and concentrate. Name an active living artist-photographer who is famous. . . . . . . (The dots represent time passing. Go ahead, think about it for as long as you like.) Ready now? Good. Who did you come up with? Joel-Peter Witkin. Robert Mapplethorpe. Annie Leibowitz. Sally Mann. Who? Never mind – we have enough names for our purpose. The next question is: how many people in the USA have heard of any one of these names? As I cannot hear you I will answer the question myself. Probably one thousand at any one time. More? OK, let us up the figure to five thousand although I think that is stretching it.
Michael Light
[Photographer, b. 1963, Florida, lives in San Francisco.]
We have not only the right, but a specific duty, to honestly and unflinchingly look at all aspects of our world, both the one we create as humans and the one we are lucky enough to inhabit as a species.
William Henry Jackson
[Photographer, b. 1843, Keesville, New York, d. 1942, New York.]
Since 1873, I have been back four or five times. I have used the best cameras and the most sensitive emulsions on the market. I have snapped my shutter, morning, noon and afternoon. I have never come close to matching those first plates.
(On photographing The Mountain of the Holy Cross)
Robert Adams
[Photographer and writer, b. 1937, Orange, New Jersey, lives in Astoria, Oregon.]
Invention in photography is so laborious as to be in most instances perverse.
Joseph Nicéphore Niépce
[One of the originators of photography, b. 1765, Chalon-sur-Saône, France, d. 1833, Gras, France.]
The discovery I have made and which I call
Heliography, consists in reproducing spontaneously, by the action of light, with gradations of tints from black to white, the images received in the camera obscura.
Charlotte Cotton
[Curator and author, b. 1981, Cotswolds, England, lives in London.]
Photography is, and has been since its conception, a fabulously broad church. Contemporary practice demonstrates that the medium can be a prompt, a process, a vehicle, a collective pursuit, and not just the physical end product of solitary artists’ endeavors.
