Philip Jones Griffiths
[Photojournalist, b. 1936, Rhuddian, Wales, d. 2008, London.]
The twentieth century was the time of photography, when almost everything of importance was recorded and considered true because it was photographed. Nowadays nearly anyone can produce a photograph of Ladybird Johnson standing on the grassy knoll with a smoking gun in her hand and no one can prove it’s a fake.
Fred Ritchin
[Critic and writer, b. 1952, Washington, D.C., lives in New York.]
We are all photographers suddenly, or surrounded by them.
Art Wolfe
[Photographer, b. 1951, Seattle, Washington, lives in Seattle.]
I often had to pass over photographs because in a mass of animals invariably one would be wandering in the wrong direction, thereby disrupting the pattern I was trying to achieve. Today the ability to digitally alter this disruption is at hand.
David Hockney
[Artist, b. 1937, Bradford, England, lives in Bridlington, Yorkshire; London; and Los Angeles.]
I can see it’s the end of chemical photography. We had this belief in photography, but that is about to disappear because of the computer. It can re-create something that looks like the photographs we’ve known. But it’s unreal. What’s that going to do to all photographs? Eh? It’s going to make people say: that’s not real—that’s just another invention… It’s like the ground being pulled from underneath us.
David Goldblatt
[Photographer, b. 1930, Randfontein, South Africa, d. 2018, Johannesburg.]
It was always possible for Joseph Stalin to remove Trotsky from a group photograph. Digital technology made it simpler, easier, faster...
Susan Meiselas
[Photographer, b. 1948, Baltimore, Maryland, lives in New York.]
If Instagram had been available when I was working in Nicaragua in 1978, I’m sure I would have wanted to use it as a way of reporting directly from the streets during the insurrection.
Andy Grundberg
[Critic, curator, and educator, lives in Washington, D.C.]
In the future, readers of newspapers and magazines will probably view news pictures more as illustrations than as reportage, since they can no longer distinguish between a genuine image and one that has been manipulated.
Idris Khan
[Artist, b. 1978, Birmingham, England, lives in London.]
Recently, I can’t seem to take a straight photograph without thinking that what I am photographing won’t be the final image—like the world in front of me is not good enough or something.
