David Wojnarowicz
[Artist and activist, b. 1954, Redbank, New Jersey, d. 1990, New York.]
I am all emptiness and futility. I am an empty stranger, a carbon copy of my form. I can no longer find what I’m looking for outside of myself. It doesn’t exist out there. Maybe it’s only in here, inside my head. But my head is glass and my eyes have stopped being cameras, the tape has run out and nobody’s words can touch me.
To me, photographs are like words and I generally will place many photographs together or print them one inside the other in order to construct a free-floating sentence that speaks about the world I witness.
History is made and preserved by and for particular classes of people. A camera in some hands can preserve an alternate history.
... all of my life I’ve made things that are like fragmented mirrors of what I perceive to be the world. As far as I’m concerned the fact that in 1990 the human body is still a taboo subject is unbelievably ridiculous. What exactly is frightening about the human body?
No one can really explain in a rational way what makes a good photograph or a bad photograph... This is why the art world will not throw billions of dollars at photography the way it has at painting; and that is what makes it an exciting medium.
