Jerry Uelsmann
[Photographer, b. 1934, Detroit, Michigan, lives in Gainesville, Florida.]
I am drawn to art that challenges one’s sense of reality.
Aaron Siskind
[Photographer, b. 1903, New York, d. 1991, Providence, Rhode Island.]
It is no longer a matter of expressing reality, but of expressing what one feels about reality.
Siegfried Kracauer
[Media critic and sociologist, b. 1889, Frankfurt, Germany, d. 1966, New York.]
The question is whether the image decisively catches reality.
(1930)
Duane Michals
[Photographer, b. 1932, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]
People believe in the reality of photographs, but not in the reality of paintings. That gives photographers an enormous advantage. Unfortunately, photographers also believe in the reality of photographs.
A.D. Coleman
[Critic and writer, b. 1943, New York, lives in New York.]
We’ve spent now about 150 years trying to convince ourselves that photographs are reliable evidence, some unimpeachable slice of the real world. That was a myth from the very beginning.
Anders Petersen
[Photographer, b. 1944, Solna, Sweden, lives in Stockholm.]
I can’t describe reality; at the most, I can try to capture things that seem to be valid, the way I see them.
Justine Kurland
[Photographer, b. 1969, Warsaw, New York, lives mostly on the road.]
It seemed clear to me early on that one of the things a photograph could do was make a reality, and I wanted to do that. I always think of looking inside an Easter egg and seeing a perfect world.
Jean Cocteau
[Writer, poet, artist, and filmmaker, b. 1889, Maisons-Lafitte, France, d. 1963, Milly-la-Foret, France.]
The runner stopped dead, lost his balance, froze in one of those violent attitudes in which the photographers petrify living reality.
