Diane Arbus
[Photographer, b. 1923, New York, d. 1971, New York.]
[Photographs] are the proof that something was there and no longer is. Like a stain. And the stillness is boggling. You can turn away but when you come back they’ll still be there looking at you.
(March, 1971, six months before her suicide) 
Errol Morris
[Documentary filmmaker, b. 1948, Hewlett, New York, lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
People often trust low-res images because they
look more real. But of course they are not more real, just easier to fake… You never see a 10-megapixel photograph of Big Foot or the Abominable Snowman or the Loch Ness Monster.
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
A photograph passes for incontrovertible proof that a given thing has happened. The picture may distort; but there’s always a presumption that something exists, or did exist, which is like what’s in the picture.
Errol Morris
[Documentary filmmaker, b. 1948, Hewlett, New York, lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.]
Photography can lead us astray, we can be tricked by ocular proof. And photography—and I believe this is the right verb—can entice us into error.
Gilles Peress
[Photographer, b. 1946, Neuilly, France, lives in New York.]
I don’t care so much anymore about “good photography,” I am gathering evidence for history.
Chris Burden
[Artist, b. 1946, Boston, Massachusetts, d. 2015, Los Angeles.]
I will be shot with a rifle at 7:45 P.M. I hope to have some good photos.
Susan Sontag
[Writer, theorist, and critic, b. 1933, New York, d. 2004, New York.]
A photograph is supposed not to evoke but to show. That is why photographs, unlike handmade images, can count as evidence. But evidence of what?
Lucy Lippard
[Critic and writer, b. 1936, New York, lives in Galisteo, New Mexico.]
Despite having been awarded the dubious honor of arthood, all photography is still perceived as having one foot in the real world, a toe in the chilly waters of verisimilitude, no matter how often it is demonstrated that photographs can and do lie.
