Ralph Steiner
[Photographer, b. 1899, Cleveland, Ohio, d. 1986, Hanover, New Hampshire.]
The thing to bear in mind in ‘reading’ photographs is that none of them can tell the full truth.
Leonard Freed
[Photographer, b. 1929, Brooklyn, New York, d. 2006, Garrison, New York.]
Ultimately photography is about who you are. It’s the seeking of truth in relation to yourself. And seeking truth becomes a habit.
Frank Meadow Sutcliffe
[Photographer, b. 1852, Headingley, Leeds, England, d. 1941, Whitby, England.]
May I say that a photograph gives us the naked truth, which has to be clothed by the imagination.
(1892)
Larry Clark
[Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1943, Tulsa, Oklahoma, lives in New York.]
The one thing I wanted to do in
Tulsa was cut through the bull and tell the truth.
Richard Avedon
[Photographer, b. 1923, New York, d. 2004, San Antonio, Texas.]
A portrait is not a likeness. The moment an emotion or fact is transformed into a photograph it is no longer a fact but an opinion. There is no such thing as inaccuracy in a photograph. All photographs are accurate. None of them is the truth.
Rineke Dijkstra
[Photographer, b. 1959, Sittard, The Netherlands, lives in Amsterdam.]
A photo is always a kind of lie. Truth is only present for a matter of a fraction of a second.
Richard Avedon
[Photographer, b. 1923, New York, d. 2004, San Antonio, Texas.]
A portrait isn’t a fact but an opinion—an occasion rather than a truth.
Sally Mann
[Photographer, b. 1951, Lexington, Virginia, lives in Lexington.]
When the good pictures come, we hope they tell truths, but truths “told slant,” just as Emily Dickinson commanded.
