Larry Clark
[Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1943, Tulsa, Oklahoma, lives in New York.]
The work all comes from a psychological need. See the images that I make… It’s really a psychological need. I’m just jerked around by it. I’m pulled by it.
Catherine Opie
[Photographer, b. 1961, Sandusky, Ohio, lives in Los Angeles.]
I’m glad there is a queer, out, dyke artist that’s being called an American photographer.
Christopher Isherwood
[b. 1904, Disley, Cheshire, England, d. 1986, Santa Monica, California.]
I am a camera with its shutter open, quite passive, recording—not thinking... Someday all this will have to be developed, carefully printed, fixed.
Chester Higgins
[Photographer, b. 1946, Lexington, Kentucky, lives in Brooklyn, New York.]
I had a choice: I could wail against the racism of the [prevailing] pictures or I could go and create photographs that would tell a contrary story.
Leonard Freed
[Photographer, b. 1929, Brooklyn, New York, d. 2006, Garrison, New York.]
Ultimately photography is about who you are. It’s the seeking of truth in relation to yourself. And seeking truth becomes a habit.
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
Being modern (and if we have the habit of looking at photographs, we are by definition modern), we understand all identities to be constructions. The only irrefutable reality—and our best clue to identity—is how people appear.
Duane Michals
[Photographer, b. 1932, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]
You can never capture a person in picture, never. You might get an interesting expression or gesture. I almost never research a picture subject ahead of time. I think Karsh is full of baloney. Can you imagine spending a whole week out in La Jolla with Jonas Salk soaking up his ambiance, then wind up making him look as if he’s in the studio in Ottawa with his thumb under his chin?
Alfred Stieglitz
[Photographer and curator, b. 1864, Hoboken, New Jersey, d. 1946, New York.]
I was born in Hoboken. I am an American. Photography is my passion. The search for Truth is my obsession.
(1921)
