Philip Jones Griffiths
[Photojournalist, b. 1936, Rhuddian, Wales, d. 2008, London.]
The problem with photography is that you can decontextualize war. What does a picture of a wounded body, or a mother clasping her wounded child mean? Why is it happening? I want to know that. I’m not satisfied just photographing little sorts of visual climaxes to a conflict. I want to know what led up to it and what’s going to happen next.
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
Standing alone, photographs promise an understanding they cannot deliver. In the company of words, they take on meaning, but they slough off one meaning and take on another with alarming ease.
Tracey Moffatt
[Photographer, b. 1960, Brisbane, Australia, lives in New York.]
My work may feature brown faces but it could be anybody’s story.
Danny Lyon
[Photographer, b. 1942, New York, lives in Ulster County, New York.]
In the collages you can have drama, a beginning, middle, and end, all kinds of things you can’t have in a photograph alone. I mean, I love Walker Evans’ photographs, they’re perfect and I adore them, but life goes on. He made those pictures in the ‘30s, and here we are sixty years later... But it’s hard for me to say, “The single photograph is dead.” That would be pretentious and silly.
Albert Renger-Patzsch
[Artist, b. 1897, Würzburg, Bavaria, Germany, d. 1966, Wamel Dorf, Über Soest, West Germany.]
Technique does not need to be interpreted. It interprets itself. You have to choose the right objects and focus on them precisely and they will tell you their own stories.
Anna Nicole Smith (Vicki Lynn Marshall)
[Model, b. 1967, Houston, Texas, d. 2007, Hollywood, Florida.]
He’s comming to meet me on Sun. Cant wait!!... Please God let him love me!!... This could be it [followed by five happy faces].... Hes going to publish my pictures Im so glad I didn’t sleep with him either!... I hate for men to want sex all the time. I hate sex anyway.
(1992, diary entry as she prepares for a meeting with Paul Marciano, head of Guess.)
Cindy Sherman
[Artist, b. 1954, Glen Ridge, New Jersey, lives in New York.]
Once I set up, the camera starts clicking, then I just start to move and watch how I move in the mirror. It’s not like I’m method acting or anything. I don’t feel that I am that person. I may be thinking about a certain story or situation, but I don’t become her. There’s this distance. The image in the mirror becomes her—the image the camera gets on the film. And the one thing I’ve always known is that the camera lies.
Helmut Newton
[Photographer, b. 1920, Berlin, d. 2004, Los Angeles.]
If I have really nothing to do, I start spinning a tale for myself, which is one of the most pleasant ways of spending time. My pictures are like a story that has no beginning, no middle, and no end.
