Peter Turnley
[Photographer, b. 1955, Fort Wayne, Indiana, lives in New York and Paris.]
The one thing that is always clear in my mind is that the people, and their stories, and the themes of life that I photograph are always more important to me than the process of photography itself.
John Steinbeck
[Writer, b. 1902, Salinas, California, d. 1968, Sag Harbor, New York.]
... the camera need not be a cold mechanical device. Like the pen, it is as good as the man who uses it. It can be an extension of the mind and heart.
Jerome Liebling
[Photographer, b. 1924, New York, d. 2011, Northampton, Massachusetts.]
My sympathies have always been with the everyday people... the center of my photography.
Dorothea Lange
[Photographer, b. 1895, Hoboken, New Jersey, d. 1965, San Francisco.]
I am trying here to say something about the despised, the defeated, the alienated. About death and disaster, about the wounded, the crippled, the helpless, the rootless, the dislocated. About finality. About the last ditch.
Hu?nh Công “Nick” Ut
[Photographer, b. 1951, rural Mekong Delta, province of Long An, Vietnam, lives in Los Angeles.]
Nick see her skin coming off and stopped [taking photographs]. I didn’t want her to die too.
(On stopping photography in order to take napalmed child Kim Phuc to the hospital after her village of Trang Bang, Vietnam was bombed in 1972.)
Paul Strand
[Photographer, b. 1890, New York, d. 1976, Oregeval, France.]
I like to photograph people who have strength and dignity in their faces. Whatever life has done to them, it hasn’t destroyed them.
Ernst Haas
[Photographer, b. 1921, Vienna, Austria, d. 1986, New York City.]
Stray dogs are for [Elliot Erwitt] a special object. He can find in them the lonely, grim life that reflects tremendously his feelings for humanity.
Larry Sultan
[Photographer, b. 1946, Brooklyn, New York, d. 2009, Greenbrae, California.]
“Pornography” is such a loaded word. I think it’s gotten really clear recently because we’ve seen some really serious pornography with the Iraqi prisoners, along with the graphic descriptions of what happened. It’s really a time of oppression and also a time of such perversion. My work is so mild, and so much about tenderness and empathy—there’s nothing pornographic about it.
