Andy Grundberg
[Critic, curator, and educator, lives in Washington, D.C.]
There is no place in the postmodern world for a belief in the authenticity of experience, in the sanctity of the individual artist’s vision, in genius or originality. What postmodern art finally tells us is that things have been used up, that we are at the end of the line, that we are all prisoners of what we see. Clearly these are disconcerting and radical ideas, and it takes no great imagination to see that photography, as a nearly indiscriminate producer of images, is in large part responsible for them.
Duane Michals
[Photographer, b. 1932, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]
Photography to me is a matter of thinking rather than looking, it’s revelation, not description.
Fred Hoyle
[Astronomer and writer, b. 1915, Bingley, Yorkshire, England, d. 2001, Bournemouth, England.]
Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, we shall, in an emotional sense, acquire an additional dimension... Once let the sheer isolation of the Earth become plain to every man, whatever his nationality or creed, and a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.
(1948)
Douglas Huebler
[Photographer and artist, b. 1924, Ann Arbor, Michigan, d. 1997, Truro, Massachusetts.]
The world is full of objects, more or less interesting; I do not wish to add any more.
Ansel Adams
[Photographer, b. 1902, San Francisco, d. 1984, Carmel, California.]
When words become unclear, I shall focus with photographs. When images become inadequate, I shall be content with silence.
Edward Weston
[Photographer, b. 1886, Highland Park, Illinois, d. 1958, Wildcat Hill, California.]
My own eyes are no more than scouts on a preliminary search, for the camera’s eye may entirely change my idea.
Fred Hoyle
[Astronomer and writer, b. 1915, Bingley, Yorkshire, England, d. 2001, Bournemouth, England.]
Well, we now have such a photograph... Has any new idea been let loose? It certainly has. You will have noticed how suddenly everybody has become seriously concerned to protect the natural environment... It seems to me more than a coincidence that this awareness should have happened at exactly the moment man took his first step into space.
Max Dupain
[Photographer, b. 1911, Sidney, Australia, d. 1992, Sidney.]
Subject matter comes to you, you don’t go to it... Although I shoot extemporaneously a lot of the time, I prefer to have half a dozen shots in my mind. Probably I have seen them many times under different conditions and I have been thinking about them. The moment shall come when I shall go back to them and make the photographs.
