Hu?nh Công “Nick” Ut
[Photographer, b. 1951, rural Mekong Delta, province of Long An, Vietnam, lives in Los Angeles.]
When we moved closer to the village we saw the first people running. I thought ‘Oh my God’ when I suddenly saw a woman with her left leg badly burned by napalm. Then came a woman carrying a baby, who died, then another woman carrying a small child with its skin coming off. When I took a picture of them I heard a child screaming and saw that young girl who had pulled off all her burning clothes. She yelled to her brother on her left. Just before the napalm was dropped soldiers had yelled to the children to run but there wasn’t enough time.
(On his photograph of nine-year-old Kim Phuc fleeing the village of Trang Bang, Vietnam after it was napalm bombed in 1972.)
John Updike
[Writer, b. 1932, Shillington, Pennsylvania, d. 2009, Boston, Massachusetts.]
A photograph offers us a glimpse into the abyss of time.
Penelope Umbrico
[Photographer, b. 1957, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]
I have always been more interested in how we as a culture see things than how I see in particular.
Ulay (Frank Uwe Laysiepen)
[Performance artist, b. 1943, Solingen, Germany, lives in Amsterdam.]
I didn’t care about the light conditions or formal aspects. I was never busy with the truth; I was always busy with reality. It is a big difference.
Iké Udé
[Artist, b. 1964, Lagos, Nigeria, lives in New York.]
Mass media is anything but superficial. Mass media is real: it’s too omnipotent to be trivial. The film and fashion industries hold enormous sway over people’s psyches, far more than the arts. I think that using mass media forms shows that anyone can make a magazine cover or a film poster, that these images weren’t etched in stone, that it was people who made them. So the main point is to denaturalize these images that serve as a source of anxiety.
Burke Uzzle
[Photographer, b. 1938, Raleigh, North Carolina, lives in St. Petersburg, Florida.]
A photographer’s best pictures are from deep inside him, and also some of the worst. Some photographers enjoy distinguished careers without ever taking personal photographs. Others, audaciously and arrogantly and courageously discharge their most private feelings through photography. Trouble is, sometimes it all adds up to baloney.
Jerry Uelsmann
[Photographer, b. 1934, Detroit, Michigan, lives in Gainesville, Florida.]
Let us not be afraid to allow for “post-visualization.” By post-visualization I refer to the willingness on the part of the photographer to revisualize the final image at any point in the entire photographic process.