Rinko Kawauchi
[Photographer, b. 1972, Shiga, Japan, lives in Kanagawa, Japan.]
From the black ocean comes the appearance of light and waves. It helps you imagine birth. I want imagination in the photographs I take. It’s like a prologue. You wonder, “What’s going on?” You feel something is going to happen.
Ruth Bernhard
[Photographer, b. 1905, Berlin, d. 2006, San Francisco.]
After all these years, it is still the quality, the mood, the radiance of light which motivates me to work passionately, almost like an obsession.
Paul Strand
[Photographer, b. 1890, New York, d. 1976, Oregeval, France.]
The photographer’s problem is to see clearly the limitations and at the same time the potential qualities of his medium... This means a real respect for the thing in front of him expressed in terms of chiaroscuro... through a range of almost infinite tonal values which lie beyond the skill of human hand. The fullest realization of this is accomplished without tricks of process or manipulation, through the use of straight photographic methods.
Steve Edwards
[Writer and photohistorian, lives in London.]
The implications of postmodern for photography are immense, most obviously if, pace Saussure, meaning is constructed internal to the frame: then photography becomes exactly like any other form of art. Having excised reference the photograph is reduced to a painting with light.
Lola Alvarez Bravo
[Photographer, b. 1907, Lagos de Moreno, Jalisco, Mexico, d. 1993, Mexico City.]
If I came out a photographer it’s because I knew about painting, composition, and the handling of light.
Donald McCullin
[Photographer, b. 1935, Finsbury Park, London, lives in Somerset, England.]
The real struggle now takes place in my darkroom where I try to resist the temptation of printing my pictures too dark.
Clarence John Laughlin
[Photographer, b. 1905, Lake Charles, Louisiana, d. 1985, New Orleans, Louisiana.]
The mystery of light [and] the enigma of time form the twin pivots around which all my work revolves. In addition... my work attempts to create a mythology for our contemporary world.
Horst P. Horst (Horst Paul Albert Bohrmann)
[Photographer, b. 1906, Weisenfels/Saale, Germany, d. 1999, Long Island, New York.]
Lighting is more complex than one thinks. There appears to be only one source of light. But there were actually reflectors and other spotlights. I really don’t know how I did it. I would not be able to repeat it.
(On his 1939 photograph “Mainbocher Corset”)
