Helmut Newton
[Photographer, b. 1920, Berlin, d. 2004, Los Angeles.]
I might photograph myself fucking, but I wouldn’t exhibit it. A picture that I find most amusing is one that June took of me pissing,
en contrejour, I’m looking around at the camera. It’s taken in the backyard in Ramatuelle, it’s evening, very romantic, and you see this stream of piss and the sun shining through.
Jesse Helms
[Politician and U.S. senator, b. 1921, Monroe, North Carolina, d. 2008, Raleigh, North Carolina.]
There is a big difference between
The Merchant of Venice and a photograph of two males of different races in an erotic pose on a marble table top.
Juergen Teller
[Photographer, b. 1964, Erlangen, Germany, lives in London.]
... it felt for me very strange how uneasy English and American people are within themselves, within their bodies, which didn’t really exist how I grew up. When I lived in Munich from the age of 20 to 22 and shared a flat with different people, you’d walk naked through the kitchen to make yourself a cup of coffee. And this was such a shock for me, arriving in [England] and how uneasy they feel with their body. Like, you fuck a woman—you fuck their brains out—and then when she goes to the toilet, she puts a towel round her because she’s embarrassed. For me that’s a big shock.
Helmut Newton
[Photographer, b. 1920, Berlin, d. 2004, Los Angeles.]
If I say to a person, I want to see you naked, and in my head I say, Well I would like to fuck her but the reason I don’t is because I’m scared to gets AIDS or something...
Nora Ephron
[Writer, b. 1941, New York, d. 2012, New York.]
I recognize that printing pictures of corpses raises all sorts of problems about taste and titillation and sensationalism; the fact is, however, that people die. Death happens to be one of life’s main events. And it is irresponsible and more than that, inaccurate, for newspapers to fail to show it.
Hans Bellmer
[Artist, b. 1902, Kattowitz, Germany (now Katowice, Poland), d. 1975, Paris.]
Perhaps there was more authentic danger in the photography that was banned—why shouldn’t one be able to produce it? But this new enthusiasm finally caused us some trouble, and it suffices to say, if I remember correctly, that it was in this way that my thoughts turned to the young maidens.
Mary Ellen Mark
[Photographer, b. 1940, Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, d. 2015, New York.]
What’s more frustrating than magazines giving less and less space is that they tell you what they want. Not LIFE, but some magazines actually want you to be an illustrator, and I don’t want to be an illustrator—I don’t enjoy those assignments. You know, I want to have a change to be a real part of the creative process and not just a technician who clicks the camera.
