Zoe Leonard
[Artist and photographer, b. 1961, Liberty, New York, lives in New York.]
When people look at a photograph, they believe it… My photographs crawl along that edge. I document the world, but from my own biased point of view.
Sol LeWitt
[Artist and theorist, b. 1928, Hartford, Connecticut, d. 2007, New York.]
What the work of art looks like isn’t too important.
Abraham Lincoln
[Lawyer, politician, and leader, b. 1809, Hodgenville, Kentucky, d. 1865, Washington, D.C..]
There are no bad pictures; that’s just how your face looks sometimes.
D.H. Lawrence
[Writer, b. 1885, Eastwood, Nottinghamshire, England, d. 1930, Vence, France.]
The identifying of ourselves with the visual image of ourselves has become an instinct; the habit is already old. The picture of me, the me that is
seen, is me.
(1925)
Henry Luce
[Publisher, b. 1898, Dengzhou, China, d. 1967, Phoenix, Arizona.]
To see and to show, is now the mission undertaken by LIFE.
Danny Lyon
[Photographer, b. 1942, New York, lives in Ulster County, New York.]
The sign at the entrance to my gym locker room says, “no cell phones please, cell phones are cameras.” They are not. A camera is a Nikon or a Leica or Rolleiflex, and when you strike someone with one, they know they have been hit with something substantial.
Jerome Liebling
[Photographer, b. 1924, New York, d. 2011, Northampton, Massachusetts.]
These days it seems that physical “truth” can easily be rearranged, rethought, or re-created outright. Any image can be made pristine, all the warts can be removed. But returning to the source of a thing—the real source—means the photographer has to watch, dig, listen for voices, sniff the smells, and have many doubts. My life in photography has been lived as a skeptic.
Saul Leiter
[Photographer, b. 1923, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, d. 2013, New York.]
I don’t have a philosophy. I have a camera.
