Lucas Samaras
[Artist, b. 1936, Kastoria, Greece, lives in New York.]
...I started photographing myself, and found that I could see portions of myself that I had never seen before. Since I face just my face in the mirror, I know pretty much what it’s like. When I see a side-view I’m not used to it, and find it peculiar... So, photographing myself and discovering unknown territories of my surface self causes an interesting psychological confrontation.
Robert Doisneau
[Photographer, b. 1912, Gentilly, Val-de-Marne, France, d. 1994, Montrouge, France.]
Why should I have to photograph in a foreign place when people there do it very well for themselves?
Robert Polidori
[Photographer, b. 1951, Montréal, Canada, lives in New York.]
Where you point the camera is the question and the picture you get is the answer to decipher.
Jean Renoir
[Filmmaker, b. 1894, Paris, France, d. 1979, Beverly Hills, California.]
I am against great themes and great subjects... You can’t film an idea. The camera is an instrument for recording physical impact.
Richard Prince
[Artist, b. 1949, Panama Canal Zone, lives in New York.]
There was a point where I noticed that things had changed in the Marlboro ad. They got rid of the famous guy, a certain model who used to be in all the ads. They took him out and started using other people. That’s when I went after it. That’s when I stole it.... This was a famous campaign. If you’re going to steal something, you know, you go to the bank.
John Szarkowski
[Curator, critic, historian, and photographer, b. 1925, Ashland, Wisconsin, d. 2007, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.]
If his subject is a complex one, [the photographer] must use the single picture as a writer uses the sentence, as the dependent part of a single unitary statement. Communication is cumulative, and the individual picture is freed from the pretense of balanced finality.
Anthony Hernandez
[Photographer, b. 1947, Los Angeles, lives in Los Angeles.]
I love the idea that I’m not there [in the photographs]. But I am there.
Edmund Teske
[Photographer, b. 1911, Chicago, Illinois, d. 1996, Los Angeles.]
I show the beauty and the wonder of the male nude and I show him in terms of his position as lord of the lingam.
