Marc Riboud
[Photographer, b. 1923, St.-Genis-Laval, France, d. 2016, Paris.]
The eye is made to see and not to think.... A good photograph is a surprise. How could we plan and foresee a surprise? We just have to be ready.
Vincent Van Gogh
[Artist, b. 1853, Zundert, Netherlands, d. 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, France.]
A feeling for things in themselves is much more important than a sense of the pictorial.
(An aphorism adopted by photographer Edward Weston.)
David LaChapelle
[Photographer, b. 1968, Connecticut, lives in New York.]
The key is to photograph your obsessions, whether that’s old people’s hands or skyscrapers. Think of a blank canvas, because that’s what you’ve got, and then think about what
you want to see. Not anyone else.
Shomei Tomatsu
[Photographer, b. 1930, Nagoya, Japan, d. 2012, Okinawa, Japan.]
A photographer looks at everything, which is why he must look from beginning to end. Face the subject head-on, stay fixed, turn the entire body into an eye and face the world.
Gueorgui Pinkhassov
[Photographer, b. 1952, Moscow, lives in Paris.]
Don’t be afraid to take bad pictures, because good pictures are the mistakes of bad pictures.
Graham Greene
[Writer, b. 1904, Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, England, d. 1991, Vevey, Switzerland.]
The less you know the better. You have forgotten memories. What you forget becomes the compost of the imagination. Renounce photography.
Walker Evans
[Photographer, b. 1903, St. Louis, Missouri, d. 1975, New Haven, Connecticut.]
Museums have a wonderful function, but there comes a time when the artist had better stay out of them, I think.
Edwin Land
[Inventor and entrepreneur, b. 1909, Bridgeport, Connecticut, d. 1991, Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
Don’t undertake a project unless it is manifestly important and nearly impossible.
