Janet Malcolm
[Writer, b. 1934, Prague, Czechoslovakia, lives in New York.]
If the “camera can’t lie,” neither is it inclined to tell the truth, since it can reflect only the usually ambiguous, and sometimes outright deceitful, surface of reality.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]
I just thought that the camera was a quick way of drawing intuitively.
Denis Donoghue
[Critic, b. 1928, Tullow, County Carlow, Ireland, lives in New York.]
The camera has an interest in turning history into spectacle, but none in reversing the process. At best, the picture leaves a vague blur in the observer’s mind; strong enough to send him into battle perhaps, but not to have him understand why he is going.
Bill Brandt
[Photographer, b. 1904, Hamburg, Germany, d. 1983, London.]
Instead of photographing what I saw, I photographed what the camera was seeing. I interfered very little, and the lens produced anatomical images and shapes which my eyes had never observed.
Wright Morris
[Writer and photographer, b. 1910, Central City, Nebraska, d. 1998, Mill Valley, California.]
However varying their points of view, all photographers share the common field of vision that the mind’s eye, and the camera’s eye has imposed on this century... The camera’s eye combines how we see with whatever there is to be seen. What it has in mind for us may not at all be what we have in mind for ourselves.
Berenice Abbott
[Photographer, writer, teacher, b. 1898, Springfield, Ohio, d. 1991, Monson, Maine.]
What the human eye observes casually and incuriously, the eye of the camera... notes with relentless fidelity.
Edmundo Desnoes
[Writer, b. 1930, Havana, Cuba, lives in New York.]
The existence of the photographic camera allows man’s intervention to be reduced to a minimum, but at the same time it forces him to impose his presence at the moment of creation, to establish a living relationship with the subject, and initiate a hand-to-hand struggle. He disappears behind the keyhole but he cannot separate himself from the door.
Garry Winogrand
[Photographer, b. 1928, New York, d. 1984, Tijuana, Mexico.]
A photograph can only look like how the camera saw what was photographed. Or, how the camera saw the piece of time and space is responsible for how the photograph looks. Therefore, a photograph can look any way. Or, there’s no way a photograph has to look (beyond being an illusion of a literal description).
