Hans Haacke
[Artist, b. 1936, Cologne, Germany, lives in New York.]
Art in the art world, and culture in general, are branches of the media, which produces our political and social thinking climate.
Wolfgang Tillmans
[Photographer, b. 1968, Remscheid, Germany, lives in London.]
It would be so easy to lose the plot now. It’s not about achieving something for its own sake, and taking pictures for their own sake. But to make conscious decisions and choices, and it includes this constant questioning—“Why am I taking pictures?” Because really, the world is... it has pictures enough. I mean, there are enough pictures out there.
Marshall McLuhan
[Writer and theorist, b. 1911, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, d. 1980, Toronto, Canada.]
[Cameras] tend to turn people into things and the photograph extends and multiplies the human image to the proportions of mass-produced merchandise and, [in the age of photography] the world itself becomes a sort of museum of objects that have been encountered before in some other museum and to say that “the camera cannot lie” is merely to underline the multiple deceits that are now practiced in its name.
Robert Capa (Endre Ern? Friedmann)
[Photographer, b. 1913, Budapest, Hungary, d. 1954, Thai Binh, Vietnam.]
The [concentration camps] were swarming with photographers and every new picture of horror served only to diminish the total effect. Now, for a short day, everyone will see what happened to those poor devils in those camps; tomorrow, very few will care what happens to them in the future.
W. Eugene Smith
[Photographer, b. 1918, Wichita, Kansas, d. 1978, Tucson, Arizona.]
The first word I would remove from the folklore of journalism is the word objective.
Cory Arcangel
[Artist, b. 1978, Buffalo, New York, lives in New York.]
I would love to say there was some contemporary artist who’s work really got me thinking, but lately I have just been trying to sort out 20 years of garbage TV culture that is filling my brain.
Herbert Bayer
[Artist, graphic designer, theoretician, b. 1900, Haag, Austria, d. 1985, Montecito, California.]
The picture is the imitation and converted reality of the goods, in short, an indirect substitute for reality.
Andy Warhol
[Artist, b. 1928, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, d. 1987, New York.]
I wish I hadn’t made so many images.
