Pedro Meyer
[Photographer, b. 1935, Madrid, Spain, lives in Mexico City.]
Ever since I was a child I was interested in those dusk particles that seemed to go up surrounding the path marked by the light. My bedroom was converted into a scene for similar light shows when the rays were filtered through the Venetian blinds. I imagined that I was very small and that I would climb up on one of those particles in movement, and that I would travel to a different world.
Ed Ruscha
[Artist, b. 1937, Omaha, Nebraska, lives in Los Angeles.]
I wanted to make a book of some kind. And at the same time, I—my whole attitude about everything came out in this one phrase that I made up for myself, which was “twenty-six gasoline stations.” I worked on that in my mind for a long time and I knew that title before the book had even come about. And then, paradoxically, the idea of the photographs of the gasoline stations came around, so it’s an idea first—and then I kind of worked it down.
Joel-Peter Witkin
[Photographer, b. 1939, Brooklyn, New York, lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.]
I have consecrated my life to changing matter into spirit with the hope of one day seeing it all. Seeing in its total form, while wearing the mask, from the distance of death. And there, in the eternal destiny, to seek the face I had before the world was made.
Platon (Platon Rivellis)
[Photographer, b. 1968, London, lives in New York.]
When I graduated from college, I was working for gritty magazines with no budget and we were reacting against the gloss of the American photographers, where everything was very glamorous and everything was perfectly retouched. Growing up in London, it was always raining, we were very poor, we never saw any celebrities. So I started shooting that way.
Minor White
[Photographer, writer, and theorist, b. 1908, Minneapolis, Minnesota, d. 1976, Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
Very often I try to find something that matches a feeling I have. On the other hand, a lot of times I photograph with nothing specific in mind. I just play it as it comes. If it’s good, fine. I find “letting it happen” relaxing, a playful vacation. Stimulating pictures almost always result.
Barbara Kruger
[Artist, b. 1945, Newark, New Jersey, lives in New York.]
I want to speak, show, see, and hear outrageously astute questions and comments. I want to be on the sides of pleasure and laughter and to disrupt the dour certainties of pictures, property, and power.
John Szarkowski
[Curator, critic, historian, and photographer, b. 1925, Ashland, Wisconsin, d. 2007, Pittsfield, Massachusetts.]
In practice a photographer does not concern himself with philosophical issues while working; he makes photographs, working with subject matter that he thinks will make pictures.
Mario Giacomelli
[Photographer, b. 1925, Senigallia, Italy, d. 2000, Senigallia.]
Of course [photography] cannot create, nor express all we want to express. But it can be a witness of our passage on earth, like a notebook.
