Graham Nash
[Musician, photographer, and collector, b. 1942, Blackpool, Lancashire, England, lives in Encino, California.]

 I don’t understand why anyone would collect my work. Please understand... it’s like writing Our House. It took me an hour, it was 30 years ago, get over it! But people say, “No, no, it changed my life,” and I don’t understand that. I can’t take that seriously as a producer of what I consider to be art. If they want to collect it, fantastic. If you see what I saw when I took it and it means something to you, then by all means collect it. If I make some money, um, fine. 

Abelardo Morell
[b. 1948, Havana, Cuba, lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.]

 The appetite for visual stuff is somewhat perverse now because it assumes that there is no intellectual appetite at the same time. It’s this weird “swallow it fast” and pay now. 

Deborah Turbeville
[Photographer, b. 1932, Medford, Massachusetts, d. 2013, New York.]

 It’s seeing all those people who you’ve seen for years, who’ve spent fifty years of their lives just looking at clothes. I mean, I’ve got nothing against them. It’s not really a feminist point; it’s just that I don’t want to be there. (On fashion photography) 

A.D. Coleman
[Critic and writer, b. 1943, New York, lives in New York.]

 More and more, lately, I’ve seen shows—not just in galleries, but even in museums—by young photographers hot off the press whose bodies of work have little to say and lack any distinction beyond their statistically unique amalgamations of facets of their mentors and other influences. In their early or middle twenties, they already have lists of exhibition and publication credits as long as your arm. Many have already been academically recycled and are actually teaching, thus perpetuating this syndrome. (1973) 

Nicholas Nixon
[Photographer, b. 1947, Detroit, Michigan, lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.]

 I’m not very good at working for other people. I mostly make pictures because of some whim. With luck, I get a glimpse of something, and then it turns into an adventure, and then into a project. 

Henry Peach Robinson
[Photographer, b. 1830, Ludlow, Shropshire, England, d. 1901, Tunbridge Wells, Kent, England.]

 Photography is becoming so very useful that it is a question whether it will not in time be forgotten that it was originally intended as a means of representing the beautiful, and became known only as being the humble helper in everybody’s business except its own, from that of the astronomer, who uses it to discover unexpected worlds, down to that of the “brewer and baker and candlestick maker.” (1896) 

Nick Knight
[Photographer, b. 1958, London, England, lives in London.]

 ... for a photograph you’ve never rehearsed—in fact that would kill it. So what you have to do is go in there knowing that you have got to perform, and it’s a little bit like someone saying to a singer “OK sing a song now, straight away, come up with a melody, come up with a good catchline, on the spot, now! Fine, do it again, now!” That’s what I mean, you’re under that much pressure. 

Cindy Sherman
[Artist, b. 1954, Glen Ridge, New Jersey, lives in New York.]

 Believing in one’s own art becomes harder and harder when the public response grows fonder. 
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