Robert Morris
[Artist and theorist, b. 1931, Kansas City, Missouri, lives in New York.]
There is probably no defense against the malevolent powers of the photograph to convert every visible aspect of the world into a static, consumable image.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]
...the danger is that photography might become very precious — “Oh, a very rare print.” There’s not a very real place for it. But what does it mean? That preciousness is a sickness. Why do photographers start giving numbers to their prints? It’s absurd. What do you do when the 20th print has been done? Do you swallow the negative? Do you shoot yourself? It’s the gimmick of money.
Brassaï (Gyula Halász)
[Photographer, b. 1889, Brassó, Transylvania, Hungary (now Romania), d. 1984, Eze, Alpes-Maritimes, France.]
There is always the danger of prostituting one’s gifts simply in order to live and to survive. The most difficult thing in life is to make money doing what you like to do.
Berenice Abbott
[Photographer, writer, teacher, b. 1898, Springfield, Ohio, d. 1991, Monson, Maine.]
There are many teachers who could ruin you. Before you know it you could be a pale copy of this teacher or that teacher. You have to evolve on your own.
Rumi (Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi)
[Philosopher, poet, and mystic, b. 1207, likely in Wakhsh, Persia (now Tajikstan), d. 1273, Konya, Persia.]
The images we create could turn into wild beasts and tear us to pieces.
Martine Franck
[Photographer, b. 1938, Antwerp, Belgium, d. 2012, Paris.]
My grandfather killed himself falling off the dike in Ostend while photographing my two cousins. This can happen so easily when looking through a lens: for a split second nothing else exists outside the frame.
Martha Rosler
[Artist, b. 1943, Brooklyn, New York, lives in New York.]
Documentary testifies, finally, to the bravery or (dare we name it?) the manipulativeness and savvy of the photographer, who entered a situation of physical danger, social restrictedness, human decay, or combinations of these and saved us the trouble.
Bill McKibben
[Writer, b. 1960, Palo Alto, California, lives near Lake Chanokaub, New York.]
... the constant flow of images undercuts the sense that there’s actually something wrong with the world. How can there really be a shortage of whooping cranes when you’ve seen a thousand images of them—seen ten times more images than there are actually whooping cranes left in the wild?
