Aaron Siskind
[Photographer, b. 1903, New York, d. 1991, Providence, Rhode Island.]

 We look at the world and see what we have learned to believe is there. We have been conditioned to expect... but, as photographers, we must learn to relax our beliefs. 

Gore Vidal
[Writer, b. 1925, West Point, New York, lives in Ravello, Italy and Los Angeles.]

 For half a century photography has been the “art form” of the untalented. Obviously some pictures are more satisfactory than others, but where is credit due? To the designer of the camera? To the finger on the button? To the law of averages? 

Henry Miller
[Writer, b. 1890, New York, d. 1980, Pacific Palisades, California.]

 [The photographer] is like a secretive insect who awaits for the appearance of some unknown epidemic before commencing his ravages. He is stubborn and elusive. He does the banal thing in order to hide his monstrous eccentricities. He has the eye of a ghoul, the indifference of a leper, the calm of a Buddha. He is insatiable. He is a monster—the most amiable, the most courteous, the most raffiné—but a monster. (On Brassaï, who he lastingly dubbed “the eye of Paris.”) 

Harry Callahan
[Photographer, b. 1912, Detroit, Michigan, d. 1999, Atlanta, Georgia.]

 To be a photographer, one must photograph. No amount of book learning, no checklist of seminars attended, can substitute for the simple act of making pictures. Experience is the best teacher of all. And for that, there is no guarantee that one will become an artist. Only the journey matters. 

Ray Metzker
[Photographer, b. 1931, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, d. 2014, Philadelphia.]

 Photographers are victims of paradox, tracking the impermanent to make it permanent. 

Bill Brandt
[Photographer, b. 1904, Hamburg, Germany, d. 1983, London.]

 The photographer must possess and preserve the receptive faculties of a child who looks at the world for the first time. 

Janet Malcolm
[Writer, b. 1934, Prague, Czechoslovakia, lives in New York.]

 Are pictures there for anyone to “take”? Or are they made by the photographer? 

Helmut Newton
[Photographer, b. 1920, Berlin, d. 2004, Los Angeles.]

 Look, I’m not an intellectual—I just take pictures. 
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