Douglas Coupland
[Writer, b. 1961, Baden-Söllingen, Germany, lives in Vancouver, Canada.]
When you crop the photo, you tell a lie.
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.
Eddie Adams
[Photojournalist, b. 1933, New Kensington, Pennsylvania, d. 2004, New York.]
People believe them, but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths.
Wolfgang Tillmans
[Photographer, b. 1968, Remscheid, Germany, lives in London.]
The true authenticity of photographs for me is that they usually manipulate and lie about what is in front of the camera, but never lie about the intentions behind the camera.
Philip Jones Griffiths
[Photojournalist, b. 1936, Rhuddian, Wales, d. 2008, London.]
The twentieth century was the time of photography, when almost everything of importance was recorded and considered true because it was photographed. Nowadays nearly anyone can produce a photograph of Ladybird Johnson standing on the grassy knoll with a smoking gun in her hand and no one can prove it’s a fake.
Errol Morris
[Documentary filmmaker, b. 1948, Hewlett, New York, lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
Photography can lead us astray, we can be tricked by ocular proof. And photography—and I believe this is the right verb—can entice us into error.
Edward Steichen
[Photographer and curator, b. 1879, Luxembourg, Germany, d. 1973, West Redding, Connecticut.]
Every photograph is a fake from start to finish.
Elizabeth McCausland
[Writer and critic, b. 1899, Wichita, Kansas, d. 1965, New York.]
‘The camera eye cannot lie’ is lightly said. On the contrary, the camera eye usually does nothing but lie, rationalizing the wrinkles of an aging face, obligingly overlooking peeling paint and rotting wood. But the external world is those facts of decay and change, of social retrogression and injustice...
