Diane Arbus
[Photographer, b. 1923, New York, d. 1971, New York.]
I always thought of photography as a naughty thing to do—that was one of my favorite things about it, and when I first did it I felt very perverse.
Luigi Ghirri
[Photographer, b. 1943, Scandiano, Italy, d. 1992, Reggio Emilia, Italy.]
Photography has become an opaque layer, thick with images that are superimposed on reality itself—the debris of our age…
Robert Heinecken
[Photographer, b. 1931, Denver, d. 2006, Albuquerque, New Mexico.]
The photograph... is not a
picture of something, but is an
object about something.
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)
David Hockney
[Artist, b. 1937, Bradford, England, lives in Bridlington, Yorkshire; London; and Los Angeles.]
…all along I’ve had an
ambivalent relationship to photography—but as to whether I thought it an art form, or a craft, or a technique, well, I’ve always been taken with Henry Geldzahler’s answer to that question when he said, “I thought it was a
hobby.”
Garry Winogrand
[Photographer, b. 1928, New York, d. 1984, Tijuana, Mexico.]
Every photograph is a battle of form versus content. The good ones are on the border of failure.
Lewis Baltz
[Photographer, b. 1945, Newport Beach, California, d. 2014, Paris.]
I think being a photographer is a little like being a whore: if you’re really really good at it, nobody will call you that.
Gregory Crewdson
[Photographer, b. 1962, Brooklyn, New York, lives in New Haven Connecticut.]
Photography is a lonely endeavor, and I think all photographers are in one way or another drawn to the medium by kind of an alienated viewpoint.
