James Nachtwey
[Photographer, b. 1948, Syracuse, New York, lives in New York.]
They had come and hacked off every inoculated arm. There they were in a pile, a pile of little arms... And I realized like I was shot with a diamond bullet right through my forehead, and I thought, my God, the genius of that, the will to do that. 
Platon (Platon Rivellis)
[Photographer, b. 1968, London, lives in New York.]
When I graduated from college, I was working for gritty magazines with no budget and we were reacting against the gloss of the American photographers, where everything was very glamorous and everything was perfectly retouched. Growing up in London, it was always raining, we were very poor, we never saw any celebrities. So I started shooting that way. André Breton
[Artist, writer, editor, and critic, b. 1896, Tinchebray, France, d. 1966, Paris, France.]
Everything comes down, in the final analysis, to taking account of the relations of light which, from the point of view of knowledge, should perhaps be considered in its very simplest details. Joseph Nicéphore Niépce
[One of the originators of photography, b. 1765, Chalon-sur-Saône, France, d. 1833, Gras, France.]
The discovery I have made and which I call Heliography, consists in reproducing spontaneously, by the action of light, with gradations of tints from black to white, the images received in the camera obscura. Edmund Teske
[Photographer, b. 1911, Chicago, Illinois, d. 1996, Los Angeles.]
Photography! Summation of the life experienceExquisite focal point of all being
Aromatic distillation
Inmost
And ultimate
Light.
Gordon Parks
[Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1912, Fort Scott, Kansas, d. 2006, New York.]
I’ve known both misery and happiness, lived in so many different skins it is impossible for one skin to claim me. And I have felt like a wayfarer on an alien planet at times — walking, running, wondering about what brought me to this particular place, and why. But once I was here the dreams started moving in, and I went about devouring them as they devoured me. Irving Penn
[Photographer, b. 1917, Plainfield, New Jersey, d. 2009, New York.]
I share with many people the feeling that there is a sweetness and constancy to light that falls into a studio from the north sky that sets it beyond any other illumination. It is a light of such penetrating clarity that even a simple object lying by chance in such a light takes on an inner glow, almost a voluptuousness. Duane Michals
[Photographer, b. 1932, McKeesport, Pennsylvania, lives in New York.]
If you look at a photograph, and you think, “My isn’t that a beautiful photograph,” and you go on to the next one, or “Isn’t that nice light?” So what? I mean what does it do to you or what’s the real value in the long run? What do you walk away from it with? I mean, I’d much rather show you a photograph that makes demands on you, that you might become involved in on your own terms or be perplexed by.