Robert Polidori
[Photographer, b. 1951, Montréal, Canada, lives in New York.]
I walked all around it [the Guggenheim Bilbao] and couldn’t find one clear, clean shot. To make things worse, the weather was lousy. Nothing about this rang “commercial money shot.” In a situation like this there’s only one thing to do: forget about pleasing editors, please yourself.
Garry Winogrand
[Photographer, b. 1928, New York, d. 1984, Tijuana, Mexico.]
I’m sure some of [the current rise of interest in photography] has to do with taxes, tax shelter things... I don’t know, but I think it’s got to do with economics. Now and then you get somebody who buys a picture because he likes it... I don’t really have any faith in anybody enjoying photographs in a large enough sense to matter. I think it’s all about finances, on one side. And then there are people who are socially ambitious.
Robert Capa (Endre Ern? Friedmann)
[Photographer, b. 1913, Budapest, Hungary, d. 1954, Thai Binh, Vietnam.]
I hope to stay unemployed as a war photographer till the end of my life.
(At the end of World War II.)
Josef Koudelka
[Photographer, b. 1938, Biskovice, Moravia, Czechoslovakia, lives in Paris.]
Personally, I have had the good fortune of always being able to do what I wanted, never working for others. Maybe it is a silly principle, but the idea that no one can buy me is important for me. I refuse assignments, even for projects that I have decided to do anyhow. It is somewhat the same with my books. When my first book, the one on the gypsies, was published, it was hard for me to accept the idea that I could no longer choose the people to whom I would show my photos, that any one could buy them.
Gustave Le Gray
[Photographer, b. 1820, Villiers-le-Bel, France, d. 1884, Cairo, Egypt.]
It is my deepest wish that photography, instead of falling in the domain of industry, of commerce, will be included among the arts. That is its sole, true place, and that is the direction that I shall always endeavor to guide it.
(1852)
Jay Maisel
[Photographer, b. 1931, Brooklyn, New York, lives in New York.]
If you’re just going to meet consumer or clients’ demands, you might as well be a plumber—the work will be more frequently available.
Matthew Brady
[Photographer, b. 1823, Warren County, New York, d. 1896, New York.]
No one will ever know what I went through to secure those negatives. The world can never appreciate it. It changed the whole course of my life.
(Written at the end of his life, penniless and bitter.)
Bill Gates
[Businessman, b. 1955, Seattle, Washington, lives in Medina, Washington.]
Exposure to the reproductions [of Corbis-owned fine art photographs] is likely to increase rather than diminish reverence for the real art and encourage more people to get out to museums and galleries.
