John Tagg
[Writer, theorist, and photohistorian, b. 1949, North Shields, England, lives in Ithica, New York.]
A repetitive pattern, the body isolated; the narrow space; the subjection to an unreturnable gaze; the scrutiny of gestures, face and features; the clarity of illumination and sharpness of focus; the names and number boards. These are the traces of power, repeated countless times, whenever the photographer prepared an exposure, in police cell, prison, consultation room, home or school.
Walker Evans
[Photographer, b. 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1975, New Haven, Connecticut.]
My photography was a semi-conscious reaction against right-thinking and optimism; it was an attack on the establishment.
Chris Burden
[Artist, b. 1946, Boston, Massachusetts, d. 2015, Los Angeles.]
I will be shot with a rifle at 7:45 P.M. I hope to have some good photos.
Sherrie Levine
[Artist, b. 1947, Hazleton, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]
I wanted to make pictures that contradicted themselves. I wanted to put one picture on top of another so that there were times when both pictures disappear and other times when they were both manifest. That vibration is basically what the work was about for me—that space in the middle where there is no picture, rather an emptiness, an oblivion.
