Edward Steichen
[Photographer and curator, b. 1879, Luxembourg, Germany, d. 1973, West Redding, Connecticut.]
Every photograph is a fake from start to finish.
Chester Higgins
[Photographer, b. 1946, Lexington, Kentucky, lives in Brooklyn, New York.]
I learned that the camera never lies about the photographer.
William Blake
[Poet and artist, b. 1757, London, d. 1827, London.]
Man is led to believe a lie, when he sees with, not through the eye.
(Aphorism adopted by Edward Weston)
Thomas Struth
[Photographer, b. 1954, Geldern, Germany, lives in Dusseldorf.]
In certain cases, I asked people to stay fixed in their position, but the effect was already lost. Those photographs don’t work, because photography is so sensitive a medium that one can’t lie using it.
(On his “Museum Photographs”)
Malick Sidibé
[Photographer, b. 1935, Soloba, Mali, d. 2016, Bamako, Mali.]
Photographs are reality: they never lie, and that’s important to me.
Pedro Meyer
[Photographer, b. 1935, Madrid, Spain, lives in Mexico City.]
Before, the myth of “photography doesn’t lie” was used in order to cover up tricks. If I [make a] portrait [of] you, accommodate you, illuminate you, put make up on you or use a filter, am I not manipulating reality? The only difference is that now I can do it from the computer in the postclick instead of the preclick. If I decide to photograph something instead of something else, I also manipulate reality. Of course a photograph can lie or commit abuse, but it always could.
Judith Butler
[Philosopher and theorist, b. 1956, Cleveland, Ohio, lives in Berkeley, California.]
The critical image... must not only fail to capture its referent, but show its failure.
Lincoln Kirstein
[Writer, critic, and impresario, b. 1907, Rochester, New York, d. 1996, New York.]
The candid camera is the greatest liar in the photographic family.... It is anarchic, naïve, and superficial.
