John Steinbeck
[Writer, b. 1902, Salinas, California, d. 1968, Sag Harbor, New York.]
No one has ever successfully painted or photographed a redwood tree. The feeling they produce is not transferable.
Henry Peach Robinson
[Photographer, b. 1830, Ludlow, Shropshire, England, d. 1901, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England.]
Photography is becoming so very useful that it is a question whether it will not in time be forgotten that it was originally intended as a means of representing the beautiful, and became known only as being the humble helper in everybody’s business except its own, from that of the astronomer, who uses it to discover unexpected worlds, down to that of the “brewer and baker and candlestick maker.”
(1896)
Samuel Beckett
[Writer, b. 1906, Foxrock, Dublin, Ireland, d. 1989, Paris.]
I had seen faces in photographs I might have found beautiful had I known even vaguely in what beauty was supposed to consist. And my father’s face, on his death-bolster, had seemed to hint at some form of aesthetics relevant to man. But the faces of the living, all grimace and flush, can they be described as objects?
Lillian Bassman
[Photographer and painter, b. 1917, Brooklyn, New York, d. 2012, New York.]
The women who intrigued me [as models] had the most beautiful necks and the most responsive hand movements. At one point, I found El Greco, and that elongated look became my way of seeing.
Jeff Wall
[Photographer, b. 1946, Vancouver, Canada, lives in Vancouver.]
Art inherently involves artistry. I prepare certain things carefully because I believe that’s what’s required. Other things are completely left to chance. Anything that is prepared, constructed, or organized is done in order to allow the unpredictable “something” to appear and, in appearing, to create the real beauty of the picture, any picture.
André Kertész
[Photographer, b. 1894, Budapest, Hungary, d. 1985, New York.]
Photography cannot make nature more beautiful. Nature is the most beautiful thing in the world. You can show the beauty, illustrate it, but it is never the real beauty—very far from it.
Sally Mann
[Photographer, b. 1951, Lexington, Virginia, lives in Lexington.]
Because I just like making beautiful pictures, sometimes I wander away from making a clear statement.
Andrea Modica
[Photographer, b. 1960, Oneonta, New York, lives in Manitou Springs, Colorado.]
Sometimes something is so frightening I must look at it this closely or dismiss it altogether. Sometimes it’s so stunningly beautiful I feel completely left out. With either extreme, photographing makes me have to deal with it.
