Weegee (Usher Fellig)
[Photographer, b. 1899, Zlothew near Lemberg, Austrian Galicia (now Zolochiv, Ukraine), d. 1968, New York.]
Being a free-lance photographer was not the easiest way to make a living. There had to be a good meaty story to get the editors to buy the pictures. A truck crash with the driver trapped inside, his face a crosscross of blood... a tenement house fire, with the screaming people being carried down the aerial ladder clutching their babies, dogs, cats, canaries, parrots, monkeys, and even snakes... a just-shot gangster, lying in the gutter, well dressed in his dark suit and pearl hat, hot off the griddle, with a priest, who seemed to appear from nowhere, giving him the last rites.
Tina Modotti
[Photographer and political activist, b. 1896, Undine, Italy, d. 1942, Mexico City.]
... I just feel impotent—I don’t know which way to start or turn. You know what they say about a prophet in one’s own country—well—in a way it works for me too: you see—this might be called my home town—well of all the old friends and acquaintances not one takes me seriously as a photographer—not
one has asked me to show my work...
(On returning to San Francisco)
Willi Muenzenberg
[Photographer, politician, and propagandist, b. 1889, Erfurt, Germany, d. 1940, Paris.]
Photography works upon the human eye: what is seen is reflected in the brain without the need for complicated thought. In this way the bourgeoisie takes advantage of the mental indolence of the masses and does good business as well.
Donna Ferrato
[Photographer, b. 1949, Waltham, Massachusetts, lives in New York.]
It’s very tough for documentary photographers these days. We’re the dinosaurs... Today, if you want to be a documentary photographer, you have to be prepared to put in your own money, your own time, and also be doing this for yourself. It’s a famine time for photographers out there.
(2002)
Mary Ellen Mark
[Photographer, b. 1940, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, d. 2015, New York.]
I’m trying to please myself; certainly that’s a big criterion... though in a sense, I don’t take images just for myself. I take images that I think other people will want to see. I don’t take pictures to put in a box and hide them. I want as many people to see them as possible.
Bernd Becher
[Photographer, b. 1931, Siegen, Germany, d. 2007, Rostock, Germany.]
...art schools used to put the fear of God into their students by asking them “Can you make a living out of that?” We wanted just the opposite and simply told them to make stuff first and then we’d go on from there.
Elliott Erwitt
[Photographer, b. 1928, Paris, France, lives in New York.]
Do what the client wants, not what you want.
(On commercial photography)
Cindy Sherman
[Artist, b. 1954, Glen Ridge, New Jersey, lives in New York.]
I didn’t set out to establish an alternative. No one really did—expectations were a lot lower than you see with people coming out of art schools today. I did want to do something different; I was bored by what was going on in art and particularly in painting, but I didn’t think I was actually going to make a difference. We all would have been happy just to have a show somewhere.
