Sarah Charlesworth
[Artist, b. 1947, East Orange, New Jersey, d. 2013, Hartford, Connecticut.]
I turned to photography because I thought it was the dominant language of our culture.
Christian Boltanski
[Artist, b. 1944, Paris, lives in Paris.]
I had a score to settle with my childhood. The refusal to die was identified with the refusal to grow up, to become an adult. I wanted to show that situation as clearly as possible. Don’t forget my artistic sensibility derives from my personal mythology. What better medium could I have found, at the time, than photography, which seduced me as a “means” for capturing “truth.”
Jean Baudrillard
[Writer and theorist, b. 1929, Reims, France, d. 2007, Paris.]
The desire to take photographs may perhaps arise from the following observation: looked at in general, from the angle of meaning, the world is distinctly disappointing. In detail, taken unawares, it is always perfectly self-evident.
Joyce Tenneson
[Photographer, b. 1945, Weston, Massachusetts, lives in New York.]
I’ve always been obsessed with penetrating the female psyche. When I shoot, I’m like a tornado. I never sit down, never take a break, never eat. I’m focused on getting that moment of revelation, of insight, of poignancy, of meaning.
Ernst Haas
[Photographer, b. 1921, Vienna, Austria, d. 1986, New York City.]
All I wanted was to connect my moods with those of Paris. Beauty pains and when it pained most, I shot.
Eliot Porter
[Photographer, b. 1901, Winnetka, Illinois, d. 1990, Santa Fe, New Mexico.]
The camera offers a way of sublimating the indefinable longing that is aroused in me by close association with birds.
Josef Koudelka
[Photographer, b. 1938, Biskovice, Moravia, Czechoslovakia, lives in Paris.]
It never seemed important to me that my photos be published. It’s important that I take them. There were periods where I didn’t have money, and I would imagine that someone would come to me and say: “Here is money, you can go do your photography, but you must not show it.” I would have accepted right away. On the other hand, if someone had come to me saying: “Here is money to do your photography, but after your death it must be destroyed,” I would have refused.
Abelardo Morell
[b. 1948, Havana, Cuba, lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.]
A photograph is a photograph. When I am making a picture I am just interested in making a very interesting photograph. I don’t care where it’s going to go.
