Franz Kafka
[Writer, b. 1883, Prague, d. 1924, Prague.]
We photograph things in order to drive them out of our minds.
A.D. Coleman
[Critic and writer, b. 1943, New York, lives in New York.]
The past is always with us, in the form of our photographs, which we feel as we might a rosary, wearing them smooth with the fingering of our eyes.
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
All photographs aspire to the condition of being memorable—that is, unforgettable.
Siegfried Kracauer
[Media critic and sociologist, b. 1889, Frankfurt, Germany, d. 1966, New York.]
The flood of photos sweeps away the dams of memory. Never before has a period known so little about itself. In the hands of the ruling society, the invention of illustrated magazines is one of the most powerful means of organizing a strike against understanding… The ‘image-idea’ drives away the idea.
Bertrand Russell
[Philosopher and social critic, b. 1872, Trellech, Monmouthshire, England, d. 1970, Penrhyndeudraeth, Wales.]
Memory demands an image.
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
To remember is, more and more, not to recall a story but to be able to call up a picture.
Ishiuchi Miyako
[Photographer, b. 1947, Gunma Prefecture, Japan, lives in Tokyo.]
I cannot stop [taking photographs of scars] because they are so much like a photograph… They are visible events, recorded in the past. Both the scars and the photographs are the manifestation of sorrow for the many things which cannot be retrieved...
Jerry Uelsmann
[Photographer, b. 1934, Detroit, Michigan, lives in Gainesville, Florida.]
Photography is just light remembering itself.
