Larry Clark
[Photographer and filmmaker, b. 1943, Tulsa, Oklahoma, lives in New York.]
I’ve been lost a lot of times, but then I’d just get an idea and photograph it. Once I’d started, I’d know exactly what would go down and how it would end. So I just quit doing it, because it loses all interest for me when you know what’s going to happen.
Napoleon Bonaparte
[Military commander and emperor, b. 1769, Ajaccio, Corsica, d. 1821, St. Helena, France.]
To command, you must first of all speak to the eyes.
Douglas Huebler
[Photographer and artist, b. 1924, Ann Arbor, Michigan, d. 1997, Truro, Massachusetts.]
I devise systems that allow me to subject things to a model of thought. In my work on duration, for instance, every event—even the most unexpected—occurs in conformity with the system I have previously set up. And the result can sometimes be quite beautiful, because it is arbitrary and because I have not chosen it to become a plastic object.
Thomas Struth
[Photographer, b. 1954, Geldern, Germany, lives in Dusseldorf.]
[When] I am taking a photograph, I am conscious that I am constructing images rather than taking snapshots. Since I do not take rapid photographs it is in this respect like a painting which takes a long time where you are very aware of what you are doing in the process. Exposure is only the final act of making the image as a photograph.
Arthur Rothstein
[Writer, b. 1915, New York, d. 1985, New Rochelle, New York.]
The photographer [must] become not only a cameraman but a scenarist, dramatist, and director as well... Providing the results are a faithful reproduction of what the photographer believes he sees, whatever takes place in the making of the picture is justified. In my opinion, therefore, it is logical to make things happen before the camera and, when possible to control the actions of the subject.
(1943)
Ralph Steiner
[Photographer, b. 1899, Cleveland, Ohio, d. 1986, Hanover, New Hampshire.]
There are only two hard things in photography; which way to point the camera and when to release the shutter.
Barbara Ess
[Photographer, b. 1948, Brooklyn, New York, lives in New York.]
My camera distorts and I like that—I like distortion in music too because it loosens things up.
(On her pinhole camera)
David Hockney
[Artist, b. 1937, Bradford, England, lives in Bridlington, Yorkshire; London; and Los Angeles.]
All religions are about social control. The church, when it had social control, commissioned paintings, which were made using lenses and when it stopped commissioning images, its power declined, slowly. Social control today is in the media—and based on photography. The continuum is the mirrors and lenses.
