Louis Stettner
[Photographer, b. 1922, Brooklyn, New York, d. 2016, Saint-Ouen, France.]
The photographs that remain strong and alive seem to be when your vision and reality are so inexorably wedded together it is impossible to separate them.
I have never been interested in photographs based solely on aesthetics, divorced from reality. I also doubt very much whether this is possible.
When I look at the work of other photographers, what’s important for me is to see their vision in a photograph, not just a raw document.
Brassaï showed me that it was possible to find something significant in photographing subjects in everyday life doing ordinary things by interpreting them in your own way and with your own personal vision.
My photographs are acts of eloquent homage and deep remorse about [New York City]. I am profoundly moved by its lyric beauty and horrified by its cruelty and suffering.
