James Nachtwey
[Photographer, b. 1948, Syracuse, New York, lives in New York.]
The flow of reality has contours and dimensions much like the flow of a river. The characteristics of the current depend on the channel, whether it is a product of history or geology. Documentary photography has similar properties. The images I create are a confluence of what is in front of me and what is inside of me. They are objective and subjective at the same time, and they must be seen that way by the viewer in order to be convincing.
Jeff Wall
[Photographer, b. 1946, Vancouver, Canada, lives in Vancouver.]
Reportage, or the spontaneous, fleeting aspect of the photographic image, appear simultaneously with the pictorial, tableau-like aspect at the origins of photography; its traces can be seen in the blurred elements of Daguerre’s first scenes. Reportage evolves in the pursuit of the blurred parts of the pictures.
Allan Sekula
[Photographer, writer, and theorist, b. 1951, Erie, Pennsylvania, d. 2013, Los Angeles.]
Documentary photography has amassed mountains of evidence. And yet, in this pictorial presentation of scientific and legalistic “fact,” the genre has contributed much to spectacle, to retinal excitation, to voyeurism, to terror, envy and nostalgia, and only a little to the critical understanding of the social world.
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.
André Kertész
[Photographer, b. 1894, Budapest, Hungary, d. 1985, New York.]
You do not have to imagine things; reality gives you all you need.
Allan Sekula
[Photographer, writer, and theorist, b. 1951, Erie, Pennsylvania, d. 2013, Los Angeles.]
Documentary is thought to be art when it transcends its reference to the world, when the work can be regarded, first and foremost, as an act of self-expression on the part of the artist.
David Douglas Duncan
[Photojournalist, b. 1916, Kansas City, Missouri, lives in Mougins, France.]
It’s very simple... this banging around with a camera and typewriter as a “business” is just one helluva lot of fun.
Andy Grundberg
[Critic, curator, and educator, lives in Washington, D.C.]
Facts cling to photographs like dust.
