Craig Owens
[Writer and critic, b. 1950, d. 1990.]
Representation, then, is not—nor can it be—neutral; it is an act—indeed the founding act—of power in our culture.
Lewis Baltz
[Photographer, b. 1945, Newport Beach, California, d. 2014, Paris.]
I don’t think we need [photography recording a real present] at all, any more; we already know, to the point of ennui, what the world looks like in photographs.
Judith Butler
[Philosopher and theorist, b. 1956, Cleveland, Ohio, lives in Berkeley, California.]
The critical image... must not only fail to capture its referent, but show its failure.
David Maisel
[Photographer, b. 1961, New York, lives in San Francisco.]
For me, then, photography is an act of mapping: making something that represents something else.
John Divola
[Photographer, b. 1949, Los Angeles, lives in Los Angeles.]
The photograph as an object has a relationship to that which it represents something like the relationship the snake skin has to the snake that sheds it.
Rosalind Krauss
[Writer, critic, and historian, b. 1941, Washington, D.C., lives in New York.]
Every photograph is the result of a physical imprint transferred by light reflections onto a sensitive surface. The photograph is thus a type of icon, or visual likeness, which bears an indexical relationship to its object.
Thomas Ruff
[Photographer, b. 1958, Zell, Germany, lives in Dusseldorf, Germany.]
In photography, you always have both the medium and the depicted subject at the same time.
Barbara Kasten
[Photographer, b. 1936, Chicago, Illinois, lives in Chicago.]
The question is: Can I make a photograph that is truly abstract, or must photographs always be representational as reality is there at their core?
