Roger Ballen
[Photographer, b. 1950, New York, lives in Johannesburg, South Africa.]
A lot of photography is about the unexpected happening during the time that you do the work. So it’s not something that you can really predict.
Joel Meyerowitz
[Photographer, b. 1938, New York, lives in New York.]
For a street photographer like myself, randomness is everything, because that’s one thing the world has in abundance, and I am just passing through it with my snare. My camera is a snare. I can throw this sieve out there and I can capture things in it. And risking that gesture all the time is part of the joy of seeing, because I don't have to stretch a canvas, I don’t have to mix the paints, I don’t have to light the studio. I walk around in the world, which is bombarding me with sensations all the time.
Thomas Demand
[Photographer, b. 1964, Munich, Germany, lives in Los Angeles.]
[With my photographs] you have a [single, forever fixed] moment and my particular angle of vision. My tyrannical condition, as it were, is that I prescribe your vision.
Henri Cartier-Bresson
[Photographer and painter, b. 1908, Chanteloup, France, d. 2004, Paris.]
Let the lens rummage the gravel of chance and the unconscious.
John Baldessari
[Artist, b. 1931, National City, California, lives in Venice, California.]
Probably one of the worst things to happen to photography is that cameras have viewfinders.
William Klein
[Photographer, b. 1928, New York, lives in Paris.]
Quite deliberately, I did the opposite to what was usually done. I thought that an absence of framing, chance, use of the accidental and a different relationship with the camera would make it possible to liberate the photographic image. There are some things that only a camera can do. The camera is full of possibilities as yet unexploited. But that is what photography is all about. The camera can surprise us. We must help it do so.
Nan Goldin
[Photographer, b. 1953, Washington, D.C., lives in New York and Paris.]
When you set up pictures you’re not at any risk. Reality involves chance and risk and diving for pearls.
Marc Riboud
[Photographer, b. 1923, St.-Genis-Laval, France, d. 2016, Paris.]
Doubt always hovers nearby, but I take photographs the way a musician hums. Looking is like breathing. So when luck turns my way and offers me a good picture, joy is surely nigh.
