Ishiuchi Miyako
[Photographer, b. 1947, Gunma Prefecture, Japan, lives in Tokyo.]
The world only starts to become evident through personal histories. In “Hiroshima,” I don’t photograph the several hundreds of thousands of deaths, but an encounter with just one woman wearing a dress, with the dress arranged so that the woman, who is still missing today, can come home at any time.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]
What counts are the little differences. “General ideas” mean nothing. Long live the details. A millimeter makes all the difference.
Boris Mikhailov
[Photographer, b. 1938, Kharkov, Ukraine, lives in Kharkov and Berlin.]
Through the ass of this woman I saw the world.
(On his series of photographs: “Superimpositions.”)
Berenice Abbott
[Photographer, writer, teacher, b. 1898, Springfield, Ohio, d. 1991, Monson, Maine.]
Suppose we took a thousand negatives and made a gigantic montage; a myriad-faceted picture combining the elegances, the squalor, the curiosities, the monuments, the sad faces, the triumphant faces, the power, the irony, the strength, the decay, the past, the present, the future of a city—that would be my favorite picture.
Rineke Dijkstra
[Photographer, b. 1959, Sittard, The Netherlands, lives in Amsterdam.]
I am interested in the paradox between identity and uniformity, in the power and vulnerability of each individual and each group. It is in this paradox that I try to visualize by concentrating on poses, attitudes, gestures, and gazes.
Joel-Peter Witkin
[Photographer, b. 1939, Brooklyn, New York, lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.]
I’ve come to realize that the mark is the primal gesture, the internal connection of the caveman to the cosmos; an impossibility similar to an impulse in an insect’s nervous system that it could somehow reduce to dust a steel beam by endlessly crawling over it.
Martin Parr
[Photographer, b. 1952, Epson, Surrey, England, lives in Bristol and London, England.]
Everyone is a photographer now, remember. That’s the great thing about photography.
Andreas Gursky
[Photographer, b. 1955, Leipzig, Germany, lives in Dusseldorf.]
We are alone on this planet. It’s not a choice. Here we are. This is what everyone has to deal with.
