Dziga Vertov
[Artist and filmmaker, b. 1896, Bialystok, d. 1954, Moscow.]

 I take from one person the strongest and deftest hands, from another I take the strongest and swiftest legs, from a third the most beautiful and expressive head and I create a new, perfect man in montage. 

Idris Khan
[Artist, b. 1978, Birmingham, England, lives in London.]

 I try and grasp the essence of a particular work, fuck about with it on the computer, and then display all the essence of a complete work on the wall. 

Louis Aragon
[Artist, poet, and writer, b. 1897, Neuilly, France, d. 1982, Paris.]

 As [John Heartfield] was playing with the fire of appearance, reality took fire around him... The scraps of photographs that he formerly manoeuvred for the pleasure of stupification, under his fingers began to signify. 

Herbert Bayer
[Artist, graphic designer, theoretician, b. 1900, Haag, Austria, d. 1985, Montecito, California.]

 We live in a time of the greatest precision and of maximum contrasts: photomontage offers us a means to express this. It shows ideas: photography shows us objects. 

David Hockney
[Artist, b. 1937, Bradford, England, lives in Bridlington, Yorkshire; London; and Los Angeles.]

 The best portrait photographs are those that capture in a fraction of a second a period of time that looked as though it had been longer. Yet this also results in a certain static aspect to the face. The face must not be caught in a bearing that is too suggestive of a short period of time... for over an hour and a half, I tried to include a variety of looks, glances and expressions, all of which might synthesize into a living portrait of that person. 

Sergei Tretyakov
[Writer, critic, and artist, b. 1892, Guldiga, Russia (now Kuldigas, Latvia), d. 1939, Moscow.]

 If a more or less random snapshot is like an infinitely fine scale that has been scratched from the surface of reality with the tip of a finger, then in comparison the photoseries or photomontage lets us experience the extended massiveness of reality, its authentic meaning. We build systematically. We must also photograph systematically. Sequence and long-term photographic observation—that is the method. 

Boris Mikhailov
[Photographer, b. 1938, Kharkov, Ukraine, lives in Kharkov and Berlin.]

 Photographic accident may be more interesting than a consciously constructed collage. 

Oscar Rejlander
[Photographer, b. 1817, Sweden, d. 1875, London.]

 I am tired of photography-for-the-public, particularly composite photographs, for there can be no gain and there is no honour, only cavil and misrepresentation. (1859) 
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