Franz Kafka
[Writer, b. 1883, Prague, d. 1924, Prague.]
Your sight does not master the pictures, it is the pictures that master your sight.
Henry David Thoreau
[Writer and practical philosopher, b. 1817, Concord, Massachusetts, d. 1862, Concord.]
The question is not what you look at, but what you see.
Edward Steichen
[Photographer and curator, b. 1879, Luxembourg, Germany, d. 1973, West Redding, Connecticut.]
Once you really commence to see things, then you really commence to feel things.
Lewis Baltz
[Photographer, b. 1945, Newport Beach, California, d. 2014, Paris.]
One of photography’s early attractions for me was that it was – or could be made to appear to be – almost the same as ordinary vision; or at least it was the closest thing to that the arts offered. It had the illusion of being unmediated seeing, and it was that quality that I wanted to exploit…
Abelardo Morell
[b. 1948, Havana, Cuba, lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.]
The thing that makes me want to make pictures now is just looking without many prejudices. The stuff right under your eyes is the most wonderful universe—if you care to look with young eyes.
Joseph Kosuth
[Artist and theorist, b. 1945, Toledo, Ohio, lives in New York and Rome.]
Seeing is not as simple as looking.
Frederick Wiseman
[Filmmaker and Documentarian, b. 1930, Boston, Massachusetts, lives in Boston.]
The effort to see and really to represent is no idle business in face of the constant force that makes for muddlement. The great thing is indeed that the muddled state too is one of the very sharpest of the realities, that it also has color and form and character, has often in fact a broad and rich comicality.
Stephen Shore
[Photographer, b. 1947, New York, lives in New York.]
I wanted to make pictures that felt natural, that felt like seeing, that didn’t feel like taking something in the world and making a piece of art out of it.
